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literallykenmaandshoyo · 2 years

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Take A Break

Jungkook x Female!Reader

Warnings: Language, Jungkook overworking himself because we all know how he gets when he's focused on something :/

Word Count: 1.2k

Author's Note: I'm not dead guys! I know it's been so long, but with school and sports I have little to no down time anymore :( I'm trying to work on chapter two of my Garfield Logan fic, but for now please enjoy this Jungkook drabble! I hope all my ARMY's out there appreciate it!!

~Mod Shoyo <3

Being in a relationship with Jungkook was by far the best decision Y/N had made on her own. He respected her and adored her almost as much as she did him. She liked to joke that the cosmos aligned for them the moment they caught feelings for each other, something about soulmates, and Jungkook thought it was adorable.

That being said, Y/N could read Jungkook like a book. She figured out what all of his small mannerisms meant and what he was trying to tell her with the facial expression he was making. Obviously, he could do the same to her, but for some reason Y/N found herself reading him more than he read her. Tonight was one of those nights.

Y/N was in the living room browsing through Netflix for a new show to watch, huffing when she looked down at her phone to see what time it was. Normally Jungkook was on the couch with her helping her decide on what to watch, even though nine times out of ten he wanted to rewatch Hotel Del Luna. She craned her neck to look behind her and immediately noticed that the light in his recording room was still on. He was still working even though he told her he would be done in five minutes. That was forty minutes ago.

“Damn it Jungkook,” Y/N huffed, standing to her feet to head towards his room.

The closer she got to the room, the clearer the song he was producing became to her. She couldn’t help but press her ear up to the door for a better listen, hearing his silken voice travel through the wood of the door. She sighed and let his vocals play out a little longer before lightly tapping her knuckles against the door.

“Come in,”

She turned the doorknob to see her boyfriend sitting in a chair, lightly bobbing his head to the beat he’d slaved over all day. Y/N couldn’t help but smile at how adorable he looked. His headphones were hanging around his neck, grey sweatpants, and the oversized black t-shirt she’d bought him two days ago covering his body. She never knew why he wore such baggy clothing when he had such a great figure, but she always figured that he just loved the style and how comfy it was.

“Babe, I thought you said you were done for the night,” Y/N nagged lightly. “I’ve been waiting for you in the living room this whole time,”

Jungkook looked up at her with the most innocent look she’d ever seen in her life. Not even with all of the small children she’s encountered had she ever seen something so child-like and light-hearted. She now understood why some parents had trouble saying no to their children. If they looked like this, Y/N would raise the most spoiled child in the entire world.

“I-I know baby, and I’m sorry, but I finally got the drum pattern that I wanted and then I found the perfect melody for the chorus!” Jungkook pleaded.

Y/N sighed and turned to look at his screen. She pressed the spacebar on his keyboard and listened to the unfinished song start to boom through his headphones. She lifted them off his shoulders and placed them on her ears, smiling when his voice entered her mind. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, appreciating every single excruciating detail Jungkook had put into it all day. He may have an unhealthy obsession with making perfection, but she couldn’t help but appreciate every single thing he produced.

“It’s really good,” Y/N giggled, placing the headphones back around his neck. “Really, really good,”

He smiled widely, his eyes crinkling up. He fell back in his chair, slouching with a sigh as he looked up at the ceiling.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” He admitted earnestly.

“The only thing you could do that I wouldn’t like, is tell me that you ate my leftovers from the fridge.” Y/N giggled. “That song is perfect,”

He sat up straighter in his chair and grabbed her cheeks in his palms, his inked fingers touching her as if she was fine china. He brought her closer to his face and pressed his lips against hers gently. He smiled against her skin and pulled away, pulling her into his lap. Y/N knew what he was doing.

“Jeon Jungkook,” She stated firmly. “You’ve worked on this long enough, it’s time to take a break. You’re going to hurt your eyes because you’re looking at the screen for too long,”

She caught him. He chuckled and shook his head, wondering how she managed to catch him in his little acts every single time. He was, in fact, trying to get her to watch him produce so he could keep working and keep her company at the same time.

She turned around so she was face to face with him, her arms wrapping around his neck loosely. Her eyes met his and she could see the milky way in his orbs. She smiled and pressed her forehead against his.

“You have time honey,” She whispered, shutting her eyelids. “You don’t have to finish it all tonight,”

He looked at her shut eyelids, getting lost in her eyelashes. She was right. With quarantine in effect, he practically had all the time in the world. He’d begged for more time nearly every day before the pandemic hit, but now that he’d received it, he was finding it hard to progressively work through something day by day. It needed to get finished the night he thought of it or he’d lose his mind.

“But can I just finish this last harmony?” He pleaded, hoping that she’d give in and grant him just a little more time.

“You aren’t on a schedule Jungkook,” She stated. “Music can wait until tomorrow, this gorgeous song can wait until tomorrow,”

Jungkook sighed and rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, large doe eyes turning to look at his computer screen then back at his girlfriend. He gave an apologetic look her way and stood up from his chair with her. He stretched out his limbs and let out an inhumane noise when the shivers ran down his spine. Y/N giggled. She yelped when his large hands gripped the undersides of her thighs, hoisting her into his arms while her legs wrapped around his torso. He put his computer to sleep after saving his progress and turned off the light, shutting the door behind their figures as he headed to their bedroom.

“You don’t wanna watch a show tonight?” She queried as he placed her onto their plush comforters.

He threw his shirt off his head and crawled into bed, laying his head on his pillow and nearly knocking out right there. She took his silence as a no and snuggled next to him, lifting his arm to place herself under it, her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat and a feeling of sleepiness washed over her body in waves.

“What would I do without you?” Jungkook smiled tiredly. “I’m glad I have you to keep me in check when I go a little too far,”

Y/N giggled and pressed her lips against his cheek sweetly.

“Yeah well, if I don’t do it, no one will,”

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sniper-childe · 3 years

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Hello! I’d like to share some of my notes if I were to Beta-read the most recent Archon Quest. I will be going through what worked, what could be taken out, and what could’ve been better. Note that I’m looking at this through an editor’s lens so I’m going to try NOT to change the plot we were given no matter what my opinions are about it BUT some of the said opinions may slip out.

Also, a bit of a disclaimer: I know that Genshin isn’t an actual literary work but miHoYo is known for its writers’ great storytelling and I’ve always loved their work so it really came as a surprise as to what happened to the mess that is Inazuma Act 3. So yeah.

Contains:

1. What was foreshadowed about the characters and why the payoff of their portrayals felt cheap.

a. About Kokomi and the rebellion.

b. About the Fatui, the James Bond villain wannabe.

c. About Ei and the Raiden Shogun.

2. How Chapter 2, Act 3 could have been the turning point that would have us, as the Traveler, cement our perceptions of the Archons and Gods of Celestia OR what I think the death of Signora was supposed to be but was undermined by this one tidbit.

BONUS: I wrote this before Kokomi’s story quest was released but decided to wait for it before posting. And guess what? I think Kokomi’s Story Quest works better as an Archon Quest. At least, some parts of it.

miHoYo teased us this intelligent leader of the resistance that is well-versed in the Art of War. The end of Ch2: Act 2 showed us a powerful Kokomi. So why was she sidelined all throughout the act?

I actually like the idea of the resistance asking the Fatui for aid. But miHoYo chickened out and made it so that they did it unknowingly. To which I say: how? If Kokomi was so smart she should’ve known better. I figured it was the Fatui within a single sentence, so why didn’t Kokomi?

They should’ve stuck with the concept of the underdogs – or in Kokomi’s words, the little fish – of war in an act of desperation. They could’ve shown a calculated Kokomi “making a deal with the devil” and will do anything to win the fight against the Shogunate.

In her Character Teaser, she was willing to burn the enemies’ supplies – to starve the enemy. She can be ruthless, that’s why Kokomi actively giving Delusions to her foot soldiers would have made much more sense to cause the Fatui to be involved rather than the whole “the Fatui orchestrated everything” schtick.

Which brings me to my next point: when did the Fatui turn into a James Bond villain? I hate that trope so much. It’s like the Deus Ex Machina of villainy. It’s lazy. And it doesn’t even fit the Fatui’s modus operandi.

In the prologue, the Abyss Order corrupted Dvalin and the Fatui was just there waiting to steal Barbatos’ gnosis while the Knights are distracted. Morax decided to retire one day so the Fatui swept right in and offered a test of Liyue in exchange for his gnosis.

The last two locations had their own story to tell while the Fatui was just in the background like the opportunistic antagonist that they are.

It also would have been a stronger plotline to have the already set lore – like the tenuous relationship between Watatsumi and Narukami – be the driving force of the Inazuman Civil War.

The prologue and chapter 1 also delivered what we are told we’re going to get in the Story Preview. That’s why they are satisfying. However, with chapter 2, the way it ended turned out to be more about the Fatui rather than “what do mortals see of the eternity chased after by their god.”

Sure, we got the consequences of the war in the World Quests and some of it in the second act. But making the Fatui the Big Bad in the end takes value away from the actions of the characters that are supposed to be the main feature of this chapter.

How much of the Eternity the Raiden Shogun is pursuing is directly from Ei? How much of it is its own understanding of eternity, coupled with Ei’s memories, and its own response? How much of it is the Fatui’s influence?

I have to say though, I’m fine with the puppet actually. Believe it or not. I have had kinda figured that out with the weird shifting of emotions in and out of the puppet. And the dead glowing eyes. So kudos to the design and animation team for that foreshadowing.

It was also said that the current Electro Archon lost someone dear to her and, while I didn’t think it was a twin, I did figure that the current Electro Archon wasn’t the real Electro Archon. So the whole Baal and Beelzebul backstory didn’t really surprise me. So I guess that was foreshadowed too? But my friends didn’t feel the same way so I don’t know. I’m not touching that.

But I do agree that all of the new lore got info-dumped to us by Yae rather than have us find out about them. To be honest, I would have wanted the backstory of Ei to be in her story quest rather than it be in the Archon Quest. A World Quest could work too.

I just feel like the 2.1 Archon Quest ended up cramming so many themes and subplots when it should’ve been focusing on what was promised: the darkness that is brought by their god.

They already had set up the Visions are people’s motivations/ambitions and that taking them away also takes away their agency.

Then they could’ve played with the idea of the people of Watatsumi looking up to Kokomi as their pseudo-god in-place of Orobashi and so with her actively giving Delusions could fit well in the said theme.

They could’ve made Ei and Kokomi character foils of each other and have the final showdown be about them.

And then it’ll all, of course, end up with the people of Inazuma learning how to work without their “gods” or something like that, which is the overarching theme of the whole series if you think about it.

But as I said, my opinions about the plot shouldn’t matter and I’m only here to make what was already written better.

So let’s talk about something that the puppet has done which didn’t make any sense on the surface level but could’ve been clever if it was done right. Killing La Signora.

Okay. So there is a pivotal moment at the end of the first arc of a three-act story where the main character experiences something that will leave them no choice but to move forward. This usually is a physical thing like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. But it can also be a mental or emotional situation.

Over at Honkai, the first arc ended with the death of a beloved mentor and a shattered world (both external and internal). The characters had no choice but to step up and “to stay alive, bravely” (yes, I won’t stop using this line ever). It was so very well done and even after so many years it still hurt no matter how many times you reread/rewatch the scene.

This reread value is what shows how much a twist is well written.

And that is what miHoYo is known for. So I had high expectations with the plot twist (technically this pivotal moment is called a plot twist because it twists the feel and/or pace of the story). Chapter 2 is the perfect spot to end the first act of a seven-chaptered story. So I’m really preparing myself for the inevitable twist.

But then we ended up with Signora’s death.

Okay. So. They could have used that to show us, as the traveler, how Archons and Celestial beings are unfeeling and not to be trusted. We were told this repeatedly by Dainsleiff and by the Abyss Twin. But it is only textbook writing 101 to show NOT tell.

And Signora’s death could have been this portrayal. Although, to be honest, it would have been more impactful if the one who died is a friend of the Traveler.

Them seeing someone die at the hands of an Archon could have their idea of gods shift. Because there is no turning back once you see the proof right in front of your eyes.

But instead, the puppet did it. So what was the point of Signora’s death if not just a power demonstration? We already knew that the Raiden Shogun is powerful. So why did Signora have to die?

Sure, one can argue that the puppet was enacting the Ei’s will so maybe there was a point. But! In Ei’s story quest, we were told that the puppet would have no hesitation when it comes to killing whereas Ei can show mercy.

Which begs, again, the question: how much of the Raiden Shogun’s actions is a reflection of Ei’s will, and how much of it is a logic response of an artificial intelligence from Ei’s memories?

Honestly? I don’t like that they killed off Signora. It doesn’t feel right. I would’ve taken Beidou’s death over Signora’s no matter how much I love Beidou. There was just no build-up to it and it feels weak. I… didn’t feel anything besides confusion. The anger only came later because of the wasted potential.

But overall, I do think they could’ve made it work if it were actually Ei doing the killing.

So I just did Kokomi’s Story Quest and man. The soldiers wanting to continue the war is what they really should have made the motivations of the actual war rather than have it as a post-war response and then have Kokomi fix their mess.

Seriously. While it was really interesting to see the usual trauma response of soldiers who had only known war their whole life, they wasted this idea, man.

Before doing the Archon Quest I had thought that the Watatsumi had a hand on the Vision Hunt Decree. Because if I were a tactician, I would have made something to anger the people of my enemies and have them have their internal issues. And while the Shogunate is weak, that’s when I will strike and claim Inazuma for my people and my god.

Then Orobashi will rise once more.

Yep.

Obviously, I really wanted Kokomi to be a more active character in the Archon Quest.

Anyways. If you reached the end, thank you for reading this ~1.5k words of musings. Tell me what you think. Or don’t. You do you.

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bestillmyslashyheart · 3 years

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for @antiforlexpropaganda. sorry it’s very very late (and a super thank you to @caitlesshea for rewatching the scene for me and writing a transcript so i didn’t have to)

Maria knocked again, a quick rap that echoed inside. It was early but she knew Alex was used to getting up with the sun so she wasn’t too worried about waking him up. Or at least she hadn’t been before she spent multiple minutes knocking on his door. Just as she was considering leaving and coming back later, the lock turned and the door cracked open.

Alex looked faintly surprised to see her. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he accused lightly.

Maria shrugged. “Well, I learned you and all of our friends have been lying to me about aliens and murders and resurrection, so I haven’t been feeling particularly social. That being said I fell for your ex, so I’ve decided that even though I’m not speaking to them you and I are even?” She questioned hesitantly. She hadn’t actually spoken to Alex about Michael since that day at the bar and she definitely hadn’t talked to him before or after her and Michael’s very brief foray into a relationship but she knew he had heard about it. There was no way he hadn’t.

There was a look in Alex’s eyes, something Maria couldn’t place, but it was gone before she could try to figure it out. “That’s fair,” he replied. “What’s up?”

Maria let out a small breath of relief. She held up her mom’s laptop in answer. “Forgot the password.”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “And you want me to use my NSA intelligence cryptology training to hack into your laptop?”

Maria sent him a coy look in answer, unwilling to come out and say that yes, she wanted him to commit a crime for her. Thankfully, Alex let out a little huff of a laugh. “How does any straight man survive you?”

“They don’t,” Maria grinned and follow Alex inside when he stepped aside. He led her into the living room and settled on his couch, his right leg stretching out in front of him. He waved a hand to invite her to have a seat. She did, perching herself on the edge of the bench in front of Alex’s piano and looked around. She had stopped by right after Alex moved in but hadn’t been by since. He hadn’t done too much with the place but it definitely looked less like waystation now. More like a home.

Alex sat patiently as she looked around. She felt his eyes on her but she waited a moment before turning to him.

“How come you’re not mad at me?” She finally asked. It was what she had feared, why she had waited so long to come around.

“For Michael?” Alex asked, like there was anything else he could be angry at her for. She nodded and he sighed. “The mess between us will never be your fault. And plus you didn’t know my history with him until after you hooked up. That’s my fault. I should’ve told you.”

“No,” Maria argued. “When I found out I should’ve stopped.” Because while she hadn’t known in Texas, she’d definitely known after.

“Yeah, okay, you should’ve.” He was only agreeing with what she’d just said herself but it hurt to hear him say it. “But you couldn’t. How could I be mad at you for falling for Michael Guerin? It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

Maria wasn’t sure she agreed. “Yeah, until it’s not.”

Alex shook his head, a soft look coming over his face. “Don’t write him off yet, okay? He keeps secrets because of how much he loves Max and Isobel, not because of how much he loves you.” Maria privately thought it was a little early (or late depending on you looked at it) to be calling it love.

She had to ask. “You told me once that you would stay in Roswell forever if the guy from the museum would just keep kissing you. But you did leave. What happened?”

Alex closed off and looked away. “He stopped being that guy.” His eyes flicked away, focusing on something behind her. “I begged him to get it together, then he got busted for stealing hubcaps.”

“He was pushing you away. He does that.” Maria had watched him do it to Max Evans countless times over the years. “He hurts people to see if they let him go. Made out with Lindsey right in front of me.” There was that look on Alex’s face again, the one she couldn’t identify.

“Yeah, well,” Alex shrugged. “I didn’t need much pushing. He’d become this walking bar fight and I just could not deal.”

“Hey,” Maria said softly, aching to reach out to him but feeling like it wouldn’t be well received. “You grew up in an abusive home. It makes sense that you didn’t want to be around all that anger.”

“Yeah, and then the irony of enlisting to escape violence,” Alex huffed. “He was locked up the day I left. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

The words felt loaded, more so than Maria could understand. She didn’t know what to say. As the silence stretched on, she cleared her throat and stood up to get the laptop she’d placed on the counter on the way in. “So. Want to show me some of those famed skills of yours?”

Luckily, Alex took the out and followed her over to the counter, easing into the seat and lifting it open. He had to push aside an empty coffee cup and plate to make room. She almost offered to move them to the sink but Alex quickly ignored them so so did she. Maria watched him work for a few moments before asking, “are you in?”

Alex hit a few more keys before the screen changed to the home screen. Maria let out a sigh of relief. Alex eyed her carefully. “Did I just commit a felony?”

Maria shifted in front of the computer, absently settling in Alex’s lap. She only had a moment to enjoy the feeling before realizing how stiff he was, his hands in the air a careful distance away from her body. Swallowing her faint disappointment, Maria straightened with a wry look. “It’s my mom’s computer. Her nurse said that two weeks before she went missing when she wasn’t trying to escape she was talking to someone online. I wanted to find out who.”

“They let her have internet?”

“She’s a patient, not an inmate,” Maria retorted. Alex stiffened but didn’t say anything. “She uses her computer to watch Netflix and stuff. I don’t know. I just want to see her browser history.”

Alex clicked around quickly. “Somebody cleared her search history,” he announced before tapping away again.

“No,” Maria shook her head, suddenly realizing that they were really treading the line between concern and invasion of privacy. “My mom was the last one to use this computer. If she deleted it, she obviously didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing online.”

“You know that if somebody clears their search history, they’re usually hiding something,” Alex warned gently.

Maria scoffed. “I thought she wasn’t telling me her password because she couldn’t remember it. If she didn’t want me to see something then hey...” She shrugged.

“All the more reason to see it,” Alex offered.

Maria blinked. “I’m not investigating my mom. I just want to know how might have taken her, but she’s a victim. I’m not gonna invade her privacy over it. She has a right to her secrets.” Alex shot her a look at that but Maria ignored it. Maria heard a noise from down the hall but Alex didn’t even look up so she ignored it.

His phone buzzed before he could say anything and he checked it quickly. “It’s Valenti. I’ve got to go.”

About that... “I like Kyle,” Maria started, “but he was terrible to you for so long. How have you forgiven him?”

“Kyle and I aren’t friends,” Alex objected. “I’m doing this because it’s my responsibility. I’m doing this for Liz. You know, something I learned in the last 10 years is that sometimes showing up is the most important thing.” It felt like a rebuke and Maria glared at him for it. He shrugged. “Can’t stay mad forever. People have a right to their secrets,” he shot back at her.

Maria rolled her eyes. She was about to reply when a louder noise came from down the hall and Maria finally registered it for what it was: the sound of water running coming from the bathroom. Maria’s eyes widened as she looked around the kitchen again and noticed the two coffee mugs and two dirty plates. “Alex,” she hissed. “Someone’s here.”

Alex raised any eyebrow. “I’m aware.”

Maria huffed a laugh. “Sorry I interrupted.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t.”

Maria glanced down the hall though she couldn’t see anything. “Is he hot?”

Alex hummed. He closed the laptop and stood up, rounding the counter to fully enter the kitchen. He busied himself pouring another cup of coffee. She was about to refuse one herself when she realized he never offered her one. “In that sex-in-a-truck-never-introduce-him-to-your-momma-kinda-way,” he replied idly. It took a moment for the words to register. The realization hit her a split second before Michael’s voice carried down the hallway.

“Where’s the other towel?” He shouted at Alex.

“Under the sink!” Alex called back. He gazed evenly at Maria as he lifted the coffee to his lips and took a sip.

“What the fuck?”

Alex tilted his head in question but didn’t say anything.

“No,” Maria stated. “Seriously, Alex. What the fuck? Guerin’s here?”

“He sleeps over occasionally.”

“Occasionally.”

“Mhmm.” Alex looked at her. “Problem?”

“Yes,” Maria replied immediately. It had only been three days since she kicked Guerin to the curb and he was already in Alex’s bed? “Is he incapable of sleeping alone? Were you just waiting for me to get tired of putting up with his shit?”

Alex’s gaze grew cold. “Since you never bothered to tell me you two were starting something, I can’t imagine why I would be waiting for you to end it.”

Maria glared. “You knew. You knew we were together. You knew where he parked his Airstream.”

“It was hard to miss,” he agreed.

“Why is he here?” Maria demanded.

“Currently, he’s taking a shower,” Alex replied.

“Alex.”

“Maria.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I didn’t realize I needed your approval on who’s allowed to use my shower.”

“We broke up three days ago and you’re already having sleepovers with him? Did you think for a second how I would feel about this?”

“Strangely,” Alex mused, “my relationship with Michael has nothing to do with you. And also, you didn’t seem to think about how i would feel about you dating him.” Maria flinched.

She opened her mouth to reply when movement down the hall froze her in her tracks. Michael had his jeans and socks on, his shirt in one hand, a towel in the other as he scrubbed at his hair. “Thanks for letting me-” he froze when he looked up to see Maria. The hand holding the towel slowly dropped to his side. “Maria. What are you doing here?”

“She wanted me to hack into her mom’s laptop,” Alex answered for her. There was a strange note in his voice and Maria turned to him only to find him gazing appreciatively at Michael. The look in his eyes made something in her stomach churn.

“Oh.” Michael blinked. “Well. I should get going.”

“No,” Maria said quickly. “I should go.” She snatched up the laptop and fled with only a hurried thank you over her shoulder to Alex. Only when the front door was closed behind her did she stop and close her eyes. She didn’t understand it, she’d been the one to end things with Michael, so why did it hurt to see him in Alex’s home, clearly comfortable and not out of place at all?

----

Alex took another sip of his coffee as Michael stared at Maria’s back as she almost literally ran out the door. “You’re an ass,” he accused lightly.

Michael shrugged. “Did you want me to tell her I was in the kitchen when she came in and heard your entire conversation? I still don’t know how she didn’t see me.”

Alex didn’t know either. Michael had been downing his second cup of coffee when Maria had come in and he hadn’t moved until Maria went for the laptop.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said suddenly. Alex looked up at him in surprise. Michael’s hands were clenched around his shirt and towel. “For fucking up that summer. For not saying goodbye. I didn’t want to have to watch you leave.”

“Thank you,” Alex said quietly. He understood Michael better now, understood why he’d acted the way he had that summer, but it was still nice to hear. He cleared his throat. “You planning on staying here again tonight?”

“If it’s not a problem,” Michael confirmed. “The generator is still on the fritz and I haven’t figured out how to fix it yet.”

“Guest room’s yours as long as you need,” Alex assured him. It wasn’t the first time Michael had crashed at his place when the Airstream was less than hospitable and Alex was sure it wouldn’t be the last. When it happened, they functioned well as roommates and nothing more, even when they were on better terms. Neither one had ever been willing to blur the lines between their relationship and their temporary living situation. No matter what other people, Maria, thought, nothing had happened between them the night before. And nothing would happen so long as Michael needed a place to crash.

Michael nodded at him in thanks and tugged his shirt on. “I’ve got to get to work. I’ll see you tonight?”

“I’ll order Chinese.”

“Sounds good.”

They exchanged soft smiles before Michael headed out, a quick detour to toss the towel in the laundry room on his way. Alex fixated on the motion for long moments after Michael left, at the easy way Michael moved around his home. It made his chest flutter warmly.

It wasn’t a bad feeling. Not at all.

#malex fic #roswell fic #rnm #my fic #anti maria deluca #just to be safe tho i don't think its too bad

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lynkhart · 3 years

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MAJOR spoilers for the C2 finale of Critical Role so read at your own risk of you haven’t caught up!

I have so many feelings regarding Caleb and Essek’s intertwining character arcs I needed to explore, so strap in folks, you’re in for a bit of a ride! (But seriously though, this is like 4000 words long, I basically wrote an essay 😂)

At the start of the campaign, Caleb Widogast was dripping in guilt and self loathing and refused to believe he could ever absolve himself of his sins. Essek Thelyss was a cold, aloof individual who betrayed his people for selfish goals, and their differing yet mirrored narratives have been an absolute delight to watch unfold.

In the beginning Caleb truly hated himself. He shot down any attempt at a compliment, described himself as a ‘disgusting person’, outright rejected the idea that he was worthy of love, and never let the blame shift from him for what he’d done. When Beauregard and Veth/Nott pointed out that he was coerced and manipulated into killing his parents, he reacts in an incredibly visceral way, and I’ve seen several comments likening it to a victim of child abuse who was groomed into believing they were as responsible as their abuser, and I think that’s exactly how it was meant to be read. He doesn’t see himself as a victim, only a murderer, and punishes himself for it every day. We see this in the way he presents himself, dirty and unkempt because in his mind he doesn’t deserve to feel good about himself in any way. Other than Nott/Veth and Beau to a certain degree, he purposefully isolates himself from the rest of the group and it’s a long time until he feels relaxed enough in their company to drop his defences a little.

(Speaking from a purely meta point of view, Liam did an absolutely phenomenal job of showing this through body language and I’d love to see someone do a compilation video of it. He starts off very hunched and guarded, leaning his body away from the closest person to him and avoiding eye contact and physical touch; but by the end stands tall and sure of himself.)

Early on there were a few moments where he had the option to do some pretty dark shit, and I’m sure there’s a possible timeline where he gave into his desire for revenge and really lost his way, but I’m glad he stuck it out and worked through his trauma in the way he did. His PTSD and disassociation when casting with fire was tragic, but over time he was able to work through it thanks to the constant love and support of his friends who kept him from going off at the deep end.

Molly’s death was the catalyst for change in a lot of the party, and Caleb is no exception. On the verge of leaving the group prior to his death, the grief they shared, combined with their frantic attempt to rescue the other half of their party put things in perspective and gradually he learned how to be a person again, to care.

Altering time to save his family had been Caleb’s only goal in life, and so when Essek and by extension, dunamancy was introduced, you could see his eyes light up at the possibilities.

A huge turning point for him is aligned so closely with Essek’s redemption arc which feels quite apt I think. When Essek confesses to his crimes, Caleb delivers a beautifully iconic piece of dialogue where he acknowledges their similarities and how much he himself has changed as a person since meeting the Mighty Nein. (Source - CR wiki)

‘You listen to me. I know what you are talking about. I know. And the difference between you and I is thinner than a razor. I know what it means to have other people complicate your desires and wishes. And I was like you. Was. I know what a fool I have been for years. You didn't account for us. Good. That is life. Shit hits you sideways in life and no one is prepared. No one is ready. These people changed me. These people can change you. You were not born with venom in your veins. You learned it. You learned it. You have a rare opportunity here, Thelyss. One chance to save yourself, and we are offering it.’

This is not the same Caleb we met back in the Nestled Nook inn way back in the first episode. While not yet fulfilled or entirely convinced of his own worth, he knows he’s on the right path. That alone is progress enough, but that he uses his own experiences to help another escape those same chains of guilt says such a lot for his development. When he tells Essek that his ‘venom’ was learned, he’s also talking about himself and his own history of being manipulated and gaslit, with the implication being that it can be un-learned just as efficiently.

Caleb Widogast is selfish no more, or at the very least, doesn’t let his goals undermine anyone else’s anymore. Contrary to what he himself might still think, he is in no way a bad person. He loves fiercely and cannot abide seeing those he cares about in pain.

Early game Essek is what Caleb could have been if he’d rejected his friends and focused solely on his own selfish goal to undo his mistakes. Both are impassive at first and see the Mighty Nein as means to an end...until they get to know them and then their fate is sealed. The Power of Friendship wins once again!

At the beginning Caleb said he wanted to ‘bend reality to my will’ (sic) and in the end he does just that, though not in the way he originally intended. Destroying the T-Dock, and by extension the one thing he’d been building towards from the start, the chance to go back and change time, for me personally was the absolute peak of his journey. I rewatched the scene where Caleb revealed the truth about his parents death today, and it was really jarring to see just how far he’d come since then. It made me oddly proud actually.

I always felt like his plan to save his parents was the one thing holding him back from truly accepting their deaths, which is why the final scene of him in the cemetery with the letters for them hit so hard. He never truly gave up hope that they’d be reunited, but ultimately he realised he was merely postponing the inevitable and never allowing himself to live his own life. While time travel shenanigans would have been incredibly interesting to explore in game, choosing to let the past lie and not go back for them finally allows him to grieve and move on, and perhaps most importantly of all, to forgive himself at last.

I know some people were annoyed by Caleb’s decision in the finale to spend the rest of his life teaching rather than continuing to adventure, but I see it as the natural conclusion to his whole arc and his own personal victory.

He looked Trent Ikithon in the eyes, a man who he’d spent years wanting to kill and run from in equal measure, stripped him of his power and his voice (and ultimately his ability to harm anyone else) and finally spared his life so he had to live with the indignity of his defeat for the rest of his miserable existence. You couldn’t have asked for a more damning rejection of everything he’d been brainwashed into believing as a child. His dismissal of Trent’s position in the Assembly played into that as well. He never really wanted power for the sake of it; he had no desire for politics, he just wanted his family back, and while he didn’t get the one he started with, he made a new one for himself in the end.

As Caduceus once very wisely said:

‘Pain doesn’t make people; it's love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential; it's love that saves them.’

Caleb gets to break the cycle of abuse and teach a new generation of mages the way he should have been, with kindness and respect, and I’m pretty sure he’d have introduced a handsome drow as a guest lecturer from time to time. 😉

Speaking of...

Essek described himself as selfish and as a coward, forever putting his own wants and desires first, yet over the course of his journey with the Nein we see his priorities change drastically.

Having friends gives him people to care about, something he’s never had before, and it changes his outlook on life completely. For me, the first time we really see this is when he joins them for dinner in the Xorhaus and stops levitating. It’s a subtle thing, but meaningful. He explains that it had become an expectation of him, a quirk he’s known for, and so to feel comfortable enough around the Nein to drop that pretence is quite bold I think.

Much later, when he chooses to destroy the mini beacon they discover in Aeor in order to give everyone a long rest before the final confrontation with Lucian, he’s essentially giving up everything he betrayed his people for, just to keep his friends safe. The existence and context of that single artefact could have had an earthshattering impact on the Dynasty’s entire culture, forcing them to reevaluate their entire belief system and attitude to the Luxon, something he’d wanted from the start, something he helped start a war for, but he offered it up as a sacrifice without a second thought.

I’d say that’s a pretty big morality shift, and I’m super interested to see if Matt reveals if his alignment changed in the post campaign Q&A. I have a feeling he set him up as a potential BBEG but the party was like ‘no, you can’t have him, he’s ours now’ and that was the end of that. 😂

I think it says so much about the other characters too, that they befriended this person they barely knew, and when he was revealed to have done such terrible things, their first reaction was to give him comfort and an opportunity to atone. Jester held his hand while he confessed, and afterwards, while they didn’t immediately forgive him, they saw the good in him and wanted him to be better, which ultimately feels like what the entire campaign was about, leaving places (and people) better than they found them. It’s obvious that he’s never really had many friends before and has therefore never had the opportunity to be emotionally open with anyone, so seeing him gradually warm up to the Nein and allow himself to soften around them was really lovely to watch.

(Obviously, from a realistic moral perspective, he still fucked up big time. He’s still a godsdamned war criminal and really should have been put on trial for what he did, but I think from a narrative and personal point of view, his redemption arc was far more satisfying, so I’m glad it happened the way it did. (And not to derail but the rest of the gang have done some pretty horrific stuff as well, though perhaps not quite on the same scale)

He has a few moments towards the end that I absolutely love because they show that beneath the guilt and anguish, there’s an incredibly sweet and sensitive soul in there, just wanting acceptance. His dry jokes which often don’t quite hit, (the ‘I will punish the bakery’ line is such an under-appreciated one 😂) his simple joy at learning to garden in the Blooming Grove, and realising that he’d never been asked what his favourite food was before was actually kind of heartbreaking, because it highlighted how lonely his life must have been until that time. There was a moment pretty early on I think when he cast disguise on the party and Jester asked if he could cast it again to change the look of her outfit a bit and while he seemed to find it amusing, he refused, not wanting to waste a spell on such a frivolous request. Cut to their time in Aeor where he burns a fly spell just so he and Caleb can flirtatiously swoop around each other for a couple of minutes, all the while trying to beat Lucian to the city.

His breakdown when Molly’s resurrection failed really cemented to me how much he’d grown as a character. He never met Molly, his only knowledge of him was secondhand, through the eyes of his friends, but seeing it fail just broke him because he knew how much it hurt them to go through it all over again.

His comment to Caleb about not admitting defeat and wishing he could do more did get me wondering at the time if he was going to try and do something crazy, perhaps sacrificing himself via the Temporal Dock to make amends or somehow forcing another reroll, but I’m glad he didn’t. The conversation following that with Fjord was one of my favourites- he shows him acceptance and belief in his potential for the future, something he’s lacked for a long time, and when Caleb bluntly affirms afterwards that he is indeed an official member of the Mighty Nein, it’s the start of the rest of his life, and something he’s exceptionally grateful for.

It all leads to that final moment in Aeor with Caleb, when, presented with the opportunity to alter time and undo everything, he chooses to accept his decisions and carry the weight of his sins for the rest of his long life. That’s...huge.

He’s essentially choosing to live the rest of his existence as a fugitive, forever on the run, with no guaranteed peace or safety. He chooses to spend his life making up for his deeds, rather than looking for an easy way out.

I think that may have had a big impact on why Caleb ultimately made the same decision, as if Essek had been up for altering his timeline I think he’d have struggled to resist it himself. The conversation they had earlier in Aeor about their priorities and resisting temptation really comes to mind as well.

Now, to the relationship.

It was subtle, and not as ‘in your face’ obvious as the other characters, but I’ve been watching and hoping for a long time and I must say, it feels good to be vindicated.

(And if you have any doubt, both Matt and Liam confirmed on Twitter that their post finale relationship was 100% romantic)

I’d been hoping that Shadowgast would be a canon endgame relationship for a while, so the finale, and the aforementioned T-Dock scene in particular had me quite literally shaking with emotion as I watched live. Here you have two men, both damaged and guilt-stricken in their own ways, who find in each other a kindred spirit and a path to redemption.

They’re both very guarded and closed off people, but Essek in particular has a definite shift in the last arc of the campaign especially when it came to his interactions with Caleb. At the start he was quite aloof and stoic, though charming, and they had an instant connection through their shared love of the arcane, (anyone who couldn’t see them making heart eyes at each other when Essek was describing the different types of magic he could teach Caleb was clearly blind) but by the end he was incredibly open to showing his vulnerabilities and that takes a lot, especially for someone whose primary focus was to stay in control of every aspect of his life. The ‘Caleb, I’m scared’ moment during the Trent fight in particular made my heart ache.

No, we didn’t get a dramatic declaration of love or a cinematic mid-battle kiss, but I’d argue that their relationship was just as, if not more intimate than any of the other main characters were. They understood each other in a way the others didn’t, their shared guilt, feelings of inadequacy and their obsession with magic forged a deep connection from the get-go. Neither of them are big fans of PDA I think, though Caleb is tactile as hell (forehead touches and kisses, oh man, I’m so weak for those 😩👌) and some of their most iconic moments have them putting themselves in harm’s way to protect the other. Essek shaking off his forced guilt trip immediately after the now infamous forehead touch in ep140 was beautifully poetic, as was using his fortune’s favour to pull Caleb out of the rubble moments before. Caleb trying to include him in his Sphere of Invulnerability in the finale and Essek staying close to him the whole fight despite being obviously terrified of Trent was the icing on the cake. It’s clear that they care for each other a great deal; whether by the finale they’d consider it love is up for debate, but we know that’s eventually where it ended up and honestly, I love that. I deeply appreciated the fact Matt and Liam both emphasised that they took their time with their relationship, letting each other heal in their own way before they took the next step. All too often in media, and real life too sadly, a romantic relationship is seen as some kind of quick fix, and that a lover will somehow complete you or make all your problems vanish. They knew this wasn’t the case here, and that made it all the better.

While I would have *loved* to have seen them together as a couple right to the very end, the change in their relationship felt right, if bittersweet. I doubt they ever stopped loving each other, and if anything, choosing to shift to a deep and lifelong friendship over a romance that would cause them both so much pain is one of the kindest things you could do for someone you love. After all, friendship isn’t a downgrade, just another way of experiencing that same love, and it wasn’t as though they broke up and never saw each other again, it was pretty strongly implied that they remained a major feature in each other’s lives, they just changed their label slightly. Caleb would hate to have forced Essek to watch him wither away, and although his eventual passing would hurt Essek regardless, incompatible lifespans being what they are, having a period of time to adjust to it, to give them a buffer between the inevitable heartbreak was actually really sweet.

Their romance was no accident, they knew going in that it had a time limit, that it wasn’t going to be forever for one of them, and the fact they did it anyway says so much. They began their adventure wholeheartedly believing that they were both, in their own way incapable of love, only to later find it with each other. Whether their relationship lasted for a couple of years or multiple decades is irrelevant, what matters is that while it did they had a happy and fulfilled life together.

I know some folk wanted Caleb to use the transmogrification spell on himself so he could live on with Essek as another elf, or make him human instead, but that would have been way out of character for both I think. If they could have backwards engineered one of the rejuvenation stations in Aeor and used it to extend Caleb’s life by a hundred years or so, so he’d have a similar lifespan to Veth, now, I could have seen him possibly doing that, so he could spend more time with his best friend too, but nothing further I think. He longed to be reunited with his parents too much to postpone death unnaturally like that.

That both Caleb and Essek ultimately chose to live with their mistakes and make peace with themselves was incredibly cathartic, and I couldn’t imagine it playing out any better.

The fact Matt has explicitly stated Essek is Demi too means so much to me personally because the latter is a label I’ve been identifying with a lot recently, and it’s so rare for aspec relationships to get any representation! It has honestly given me a lot to think about over the last few days, and I really appreciate it.

To conclude, here’s a bit of shameless self promotion. I wrote this after watching the finale and honestly feel like it sums up my feelings on the nature of their relationship pretty well.

‘A casual hand on a shoulder, a waist, a wrist; a gentle kiss placed on a forehead is common between them now, an intimacy born of trust and mutual affection. Over time it grows, like a fire born of seasoned timber; gradual and steady, no spluttering kindling that flares and sparks, but a slow burn, one which lasts.

Their love is embroidered into every aspect of their lives together. Acts of service, of comfort, of understanding.

Sometimes a kiss leads to more than a kiss, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way they are content.‘

So yeah, I love these two wizard boys so very much and I couldn’t be happier with the conclusion of their stories. ❤️

#Critical Role #Critical Role Spoilers #CR Spoilers #shadowgast #Essek thelyss #Caleb Widogast #C2ep141 #C2ep141 spoilers #critical role finale

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cloudninetonine · 3 years

Text

Cogito, ergo sum

Pairing: Connor (RK800) x fem!reader (Eventually)

Summary: Humanity seems to be at the midst of a dawning of a new age and they’re using fire against fire to stop it. It’s a real shame for you that the fire is kinda cute.

A/N: Hi, so, there is no reason for this except that I was hit with the urge to rewatch D:BH and fell in love with Connor again so I wanted to write out my feelings. If people want more please tell me because I don’t want to write a fic that no one even likes.

Also, notes for future readers. I tend to lean towards a British reader, because I myself am British and find it easier to write like that, I don’t understand America one single bit so you bet your arse there are going to be inaccuracies that will make Americans cringe. Still hope you enjoy it tho.

Warnings: Bad language (That’s it, for now)

Undercut for convience

"What's up fuckers!?"

Connor’s gaze is still focused on Hank’s as the older man’s demeanor shifts, with a small quirk of his lips resembling something similar to a smile and rolling his eyes, he glances towards the entrance of the department and from what the android could see, many others did also, most sharing similar expressions of exasperated amusement while some just looked downright tired.

He’s quick to follow the many stares of his new colleagues, turning in his seat to get a look at the figure who literally seems to roll into the room, a box of donuts within their hands.

Det. (Last) (Name)

DOB: (MM/DD/2002) // Police Det.

Criminal records: N/A

It’s on instinct that he scans you, it’s part of his protocol after all, so he makes sure to scan every part of you, his LED flashing a concentrating yellow as the information falls in.

It stops, however, when he notices one of your arms. He doesn’t miss it, of course he doesn’t, he’s way too clever for that, but he does marvel, because he notices that it’s not human skin that decorates the limb, but synthetic like his own and he finds himself scanning deeper-

"I've downed three cans of Monster Energy and I'm ready to fight God!"

‘What an odd thing to declare’ is what pops into Connor's mind, interrupting his own little investigation in favour of narrowing his eyes quizzically towards your approaching form that has your own eyes focused on his partner sat across from him, an almost sadistic grin plastered on your face.

It is a sadistic one, of course, Hank knows that, you know that, the whole department knows it. You’ve always seemed to show a more malicious glee with him, like a bratty child with their parents, like a moth to a flame. If anything, he expects his day to get about 2x more painful than he needs, as shown with that stupid hunk of metal sitting across from him and he knows you’re going to enjoy every single second of it.

God save his fucking soul.

You stop just a few inches away from Hank's desk with a smile almost blinding bright, kicking in your heelys like you had done millions of times previously before bowing towards the older man, box held out towards him.

"Donut, my liege?"

He easily picks out his favourite, a famous Homer donut decorated with pink icing and multi-colour sprinkles, quitely grunting out "Thanks" as he bites down onto the treat, turning back to the computer screen.

But maybe, just maybe, your focus will be shifted today.

"But of course" Then, turning towards Connor, still bowed at the hip, you speak again "And one for you, my good sir?"

It took Connor a moment to realise, despite it being quite obvious, that you’re talking to him and his LED flashes a vibrant red when he finally opens his mouth to speak, politeness lacing his tone.

"Thank you, but I don't need to eat"

The phrase stumps you, because, well, why wouldn't someone not need to eat, so you raise your head "What-"

And you get your answer.

And Hank gets his relief for the moment.

It takes what Connor counted was a single second for your face to change from confusion to utter delight, a gasp followed by cry of what he decided was excitement at the sight of him, dropping the donut box altogether and resulting in Hank cussing up a storm when they nearly came tumbling out onto his desk.

"(Name), be careful, for fucks sake!"

But you’re not listening, no, why would you be listening to the old geezer? Instead, your hands are tightly grasping the sides of the android's face, tugging his head gently in different directions as to study him, your eyes bright with a spark of joy.

It was odd, no one had ever looked at him like that.

Software instability.

"Jesus Christ, woman, stop being fucking weird" Hank mutters off with a growl, watching the scene with an obvious look of irritation, "Just an android, we see 'em every fucking day"

"But a new model!" You cry, words were aimed towards Connor more than anything as you finally pulled away, although, quickly you raced to the desk opposite to him, rolling over a desk chair- your desk chair and collapsing onto it with a smile, resting your head in your hands, memorised. "I've never seen your handsome face before, stranger"

Hank physically gags.

"Hello, detective" Connor parrots his line, his phrase and of course slips in your rank because he had obviously been scanning you since you appeared in his line of vision. He already knows a majority about you and you don't even know his name, nevermind model.

It's just so amazing.

"My name is Connor. I am the android sent by Cyberlife." You're pretty sure the smile he gives you is akin to a murderer more than a friend "It's nice to meet you, officially"

Your hand comes up, pinching the synthetic skin of his cheek.

What a puppy, such an adorable boy, he looks so confused, eyes focused on the fingers keeping his fake skin hostage while you coo at him unprofessionally, Hank close to grabbing the gun from his jacket and shooting you right where you sat.

"You are just adorable, Connor"

After a moment, Connor finally reacts, hand reaching up to grasp yours and pull it away gently "Thank you, detective"

"Please, you can just call me (Name)" The smirk slides on easy, as does the wink you send him "Hope you don't mind if I call you handsome, do you?"

If Connor had learned anything about you from these first few minutes, it's that he doesn't truly understand you at all. You're flamboyant, that much is obvious, but your flamboyance leaves nothing but a screen blocking what you're really like, leaving Connor stumped on what you might do next.

That's what he concludes when instead of answering, or staying silent, he stumbles over his words and watches when you laugh, leaning over to grab a donut from the box.

What an interesting character you are.

Interesting indeed.

“(Name)!” At the sound of Fowler’s voice, you turn with a still ever-so-friendly grin and a call of ‘Boss!’, jumping from you seat. Crumbs of donut fall from your mouth and you swallow, only to hack up a storm straight after.

Fowler scowls “My office, now”

You throw the duo a wink before skipping over to the captain’s office.

“Don’t mind her” Hank finally speaks and it grabs Connor’s attention, the android shifting his gaze from your form to his partner’s, the old man reaching for another donut. “She’s nuts”

“She seems....” His database searches for the word “pleasant”

“If you think that you must be fucking broken, stupid android”

It’s only after 10 minutes you return, a grin so wide Hank’s near damn sure it’s going to split your face into two while Connor tilts his head, like a puppy, an oh so cute puppy.

“Guess who’s partnership just became a trio?”

“....Mother fucker-”

#connor rk800 #dbh connor #detroit become human connor #dbh hank #detroit become human hank #connor rk800 x reader #connor rk800 imagine #dbh connor x reader #dbh imagine #dbh x reader #dbh #detroit become human #cogito ergo sum

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teresa-moyocoyotzin · 3 years

Text

short recap of my thoughts on 5x09

okay so i was gonna rewatch the whole episode and do a blow-by-blow reaction post but i’m not sure i’ll have time and i kinda wanna focus on watching my fave scenes from the show before tonight. also, everyone else’s reaction posts p. much sum up my thoughts lol

nonetheless, i just wanted to give my main takeaways on the episode a week later, in case anyone cares where i’m at going into the finale! gonna go over the things i liked first, anyone who wants to just remain positive and not see any salty takes might wanna just stick to reading the first part b/c i definitely rant a bit at the end lmao. we’re still having a fun time tho 😂

THINGS I LOVED

- i mean... i think we know LOL

- obviously. i loved james and teresa’s i love you scenes, and kisses, and OOF THAT SEX SCENE. if someone had told me we were gonna get that scene back in like 2017??? i probably would have started literally floating. i totally respect that people had very specific ideas of what they wanted out of those scenes and could have different feelings about it but NOT ME BABES I AM ECSTATIC!!! i did go into the episode with a ~feeling~ that we were gonna get at least one ILY in the episode, and i just had a feeling it would be james, or at least that he would say it first. i’ve already explained in my meta about the scenes why i think it makes sense that he said it first and why i love it that he did, so i won’t go into that here. but i went in having really no expectations for it other than that it was gonna happen! i was debating about whether it would happen really casually while they’re talking, or in like a big action scene, or really dramatic or what, and what i would prefer, and i came to the conclusion that i would love it no matter what lol, but i was really into the idea of james just. fucking. saying it. while they’re just talking about something really casually. so therefore i was pretty happy with it when we got sort of a mix! they’re talking about teresa’s insane death trap of a plan so there’s that drama of “i don’t want to lose you esp. not before saying ILY” kinda thing, but it’s also just. so simple and sure! and then teresa’s i love you is like the perfect scene for me where one character is super focused on something else (in this case, trying to protect the woman he loves! agh!) and the other is just like.. i love you!!!! SO GOOD

- let’s see, what the hell else happened in this ep?

- oh okay i really liked james and teresa’s vibes this episode, they were so focused on each other and had this very ride-or-die feeling about them like they knew that each of their plans was increasingly stupid and desperate and might not even get them where they wanna go, but they were IN IT TOGETHER no matter what 😭i wish we had gotten a callback to that line but at this point, i’m p. sure they Know they’re in it together, and we do too. so it’s okay. i love that teresa still asks his input and considers his opinions even if she does her own thing anyways haha

- oh on that note, i LOVED the moment where their plans to kill Kostya aren’t working and Teresa says something like “If I can meet with him in person, I can kill him myself” and James just has this LOOK that just is the epitome of the “I am in love with a women who is DESIGNED TO STRESS ME OUT” meme lol, it made me giggle, v classic QOTS moment

- oh and of course, I LOVED that scene with devon and james at the end!!!!!!!! i was also confused about how james was showing all his emotions in that scene esp. since he tries to be stoic about his feelings for Teresa around Devon, but now that i’ve read a few people’s thoughts about, it i’m fully on board w the theory that james and teresa already knew this was coming, b/c they’re smart, and b/c james knows devon wouldn’t have let him walk away to save Teresa at the beginning of the season without motivation (like having him in place to kill her when she’s no longer useful to the CIA) and THEREFORE james was sort of “overacting” to make it believable to devon (and the audience lol) that he didn’t know this was coming, didn’t want to do it, but felt like he had to, rather than the fact that they were already plotting a fake death. that makes a lot of sense to me and makes me really love all the layers to that scene. it does give me a little bit of hope that the finale ~teresa’s not really dead~ reveal will be at least a little well executed and not just shoved in at the very end. we shall see though!

- alright i think that’s what i loved about the episode, if u don’t wanna hear me bitching about the little things then u should probably stop here!! just have to get out some of my saltiness lol

THINGS I WAS ANNOYED ABOUT

- i’m just gonna get it out of the way, yes, i too was supremely annoyed at the amount of KA and Pote take suburbia; it was all 1000% predictable down to the raccoon and the cookies, and the point could have been accomplished in exactly 1 scene, maybe 2, certainly not like 10 or however many we got. whatever. ugh.

- okay. OKAY. chicho. we need to talk about chicho. i for one, am not mad that he called pote, my boy was stressed. I AM HOWEVER, mad at the writers for making pote come back after saying he trusted chicho to take care of teresa now. like. it totally devalued THE WHOLE THING!! imo, pote shoulda stayed his ass at home where we had to watch him settle all episode, and chicho should have gotten THE HERO MOMENT HE DESERVED (esp. cuz he’s on first name basis w teresa now??) which ALSO WOULD HAVE MADE THE SCENE WHERE TERESA GIVES CHICHO THE DISTILLERY AND THE BAR SO! MUCH! MORE! MEANINGFUL!!!!! or just made it make sense at all? like .... i’m just so confused by that whole plotline like what was the point? chicho does nothing but call pote and gets T’s whole legacy in NOLA?

- and don’t even get me started on how it makes ZERO sense that pote would have had to charge in at the last minute to save teresa when JAMES THE SNIPER W AMAZING AIM WHO IS LITERALLY. IN LOVE WITH HER. is standing outside like. ur telling me james and chicho (who again, is supposed to be her #2 after james now) just stood there like “oh hey pote yeah you go ahead we’ll wait here good luck” like WHAT also.. how did pote get past all the guards that made james stay outside? are we meant to believe pote is that sneaky? y’all. it just. doesn’t make sense. this whole plot situation maddens me more than anythings tbh UGH JUST MAKE IT MAKE SENSE

- oksana’s daughter..... what’s her name again? idk b/c we only MET HER THIS WEEK....okay this amuses me but i’m also annoyed b/c like. there were so many other women who could have taken that spot in the opening sequence... Lil T, Castel, hell even Isabela??? Like idk how they could have done it but they put so much effort into her plot in the first seasons that i really thought she was gonna end up w/ Teresa in the end.. idk that would have been kind cool, Camila’s two “daughters” eventually working their way out of the life together..again idk how they could have realistically done it but i really do wish it had been someone we met before. if it had to be someone new this season, they could have introduced her earlier instead of one of the seemingly dozens of random guys we knew for 1 episode before they died... like.. give her some depth please. is she even gonna be in the finale? honestly she better be after making us listen to pote welcome her into the family... like the family u were supposed to leave so u could have an actual baby pote? the family that’s literally dispersing as we speak? also.. since when did pote love oksana so much anyways? also...... just.. if teresa’s gonna have some sort of daughter figure or whatever she’s supposed to be, wouldn’t it make sense to have her be the one to give the big welcome to the family speech? idk y’all..... i’m amused but also baffled at the sheer lack of planning behind this. did no one realize they needed someone for the opening scene until like. halfway thru the season? did they plan to have it be castel but they couldn’t get her for filming (hence all the weird castel plots?) INQUIRING MINDS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW. it’s whatever tho lol

- i just hope that what’s-her-name gets a lil bit of plot in the finale esp. since otherwise it might just be pote running around being pissy (i don’t actually think that haha but i am a lil nervous that teresa won’t come back until the last few mins and i’ll have to spend all episode looking at boaz and devon and pote and KA.. i haven’t looked at any spoilers tho so i’m still hopeful! i will probably make a post about my hopes going into the finale a lil later, both realistic and unrealistic :)

#ik it's all been said before but i just had to get my feelings out before i could move on to the finale #the finale!!! wow.. crazy shit y'all #qots #queen of the south #jeresa #qots 5x09

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

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TL/DR - Catra is a uniquely complex and compelling character who has -so much going on- compared with most characters in any medium. Her character arc is psychologically astute, morally powerful and dramatically compelling, and it pushes the boundaries of the audiences sympathies in ways that are really groundbreaking for a kids show, and her arcs conclusion celebrates love, growth, and the power to change in a way that is all too rare in TV for grown ups.

Content note for mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm.

Well, now that the summary is out of the way, here’s a massive fucking dissertation on why Catra is such a great character.

This is the first of a series of posts outlining things that make She Ra a truly great show, one that stands out even 15 years into a golden age of TV animation for kids. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive account for why the show is great - the real answer is that this show has so many arcs and so many fully realized characters and they are all growing and changing in ways that interact with each other and complement each other so well. But I’m going to highlight some particular standouts, things that this show does better than anything else, things that made me step back and say ‘holy shit they did this in a show pitched at 10 year olds?!’

And so the first of these posts is about Catra. I’ve never seen a character in a kids TV show like Catra before. Depending on the season, she’s an anti-villain, an outright villain and an anti-hero and then, in the end, a hero. Being glib, I describe her in villain mode as a Saturday morning cartoon Supervillain as written by like, Dostoevsky. She’s got the trappings of classic villain camp - long speeches, sneering, over-complicated plans, she’s oddly ineffectual at times etc/ Yet all of this is underlaid and justified by something much deeper - her feelings of rejection, her desire to lash out at everyone around her, at her self-hatred and hatred of everyone and everything else (at least by Season 4. Good God.) And her actions are as dark as her motivations - she nearly destroys reality out of spite, betrays literally everyone who cares about her (often multiple times) and isolates herself so completely that in the season 4 finale she is a solitary, suicidal wreck of a person. Hell, in her last fight with Hordak, I was definitely rooting for Hordak (to say nothing of Glimmer, who is a pretty impressive antiheroine, like if Sparkles had just blasted her into glittery oblivion would we have held it against her?).

Let's start by discussing trauma. It comes up a lot with Catra for obvious and good reasons. But I almost feel like that word is insufficient for what's going on with Catra, or at least, we shouldn't stop with it (I know there are terms like complex trauma, but rather than simply using those I want to explain the difference between Catra’s consistent abuse and a single traumatic event). To use another example from a different show, Korra was also traumatized in season 4. But she was traumatized by a series of an events when she was a young adult. She had something horrible happen to her, and it fucked her up, and then she had exposure therapy with Zaheer and at least starts to get better. Catra...Catra is much more consistently abused. It's not just that shadow weaver traumatized her with the various acts of torture, but that Shadow Weaver taught Catra both an explicit worldview and a series of coping mechanisms that she struggles with through young adulthood. First, Shadow Weaver trained Catra to seek her approval. This is something she is particularly vulnerable to with Shadow Weaver, but also what she does with Hordak and to a extent Double Trouble. Catra's instinct when people mistreat her or show that they aren't trustworthy is to invest further in the relationship, until the breaking point. By contrast, when people treat her well Catra lashes out or takes them for granted. This is uh…a dymamic I am acquainted with among people who have been abused as kids, people whom I love. It is pretty rough.

She also developed a desire to prove herself. This starts off being tied to her drive for approval, but combined with her competitive streak (which is expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways with Adora) it turns into a desire to beat Shadow Weaver and then Hordak at their own game.

At the same time, Catra learned by always being blamed for everything to evade and deny responsibility, no matter what. I think this form of self reassurance is tied to her self doubt (I think at some level she does think she is worthless) and her self hatred. It is also enabled by Adora’s martyr complex and willingness even act as Catra’s punching bag (as we see in the flashback in Corridors). This is a dynamic that actually repeats in an even worse fashion with Scorpia. Far from being arrogant, her constant evasions, put downs against others and preening speeches sound like the words of a woman who is trying to convince herself most of all. This tendency borders on narcissistic self delusion by season 3-4, which she begins recounting her version of events and possibly believing it even when it is obviously false, and everyone knows it.

When it comes to worldviews, Shadow Weaver taught Catra that love is about control and manipulation. We see this in seasons 1-3 where she congratulates herself for manipulating Adora when all she has done is take advantage of Adora's lingering love for her. Meanwhile, she’s learned that power is her only protection, and that the only way to stay on top is to abuse those beneath her.

The final kind of static tendency in Catra is her identity in the horde and her view of herself as one of the bad guys. This is something she rarely articulates but underlies much of her her decision to stay and not join Adora (at least at first). I think one thing to consider is that even if Catra never believed horde propaganda, it may have made her cynical and unwilling to imagine something better for herself or the world. Another factor is having struggled to belong in the horde for so long, she isn't going to give up now. At first this ties into her desire to win the approval of shadow weaver and Hordak, then it comes from her desire to prove herself better than them. Another factor is her self hatred. She sees herself as someone who hurts people, perhaps as a monster. She sees herself as a bad guy and so team evil is her side.

So yeah, our girl is kinda fucked up.

And yet Catra is never reduced to the sum of her traumas and bad habits. At every step of the way she is shown as a moral agent. She is shaped by shadow Weaver's abuse but she remains aware of and responsible for her actions. This is a double edged sword. She is fully responsible for her actions, but also she is never shown as broken by abuse or mental illness. She’s fully responsible, but by the same token is also redeemable, because she still has a choice.

So with that our of the way, let's go to Catra's arc.

I’m not going to recite everything terrible Catra does because I’m still on my first complete rewatch and I honestly find it hard to list it all. It’s a lot. So let’s talk about her shifting motivations. Early on, we see her desire for approval and recognition motivating her in ways that are so easy to sympathize with - she’s been told she’s worthless for years, and she wants to be worth something. We see how much she’s been scarred by Shadow Weavers abuse and by the ruthlessness and callousness of the Horde, and can sympathize with her desire to survive and advance since her own position is so untenable. We also see how, at first, she wants to be reunited with Adora. Her first huge turn into much darker territory is Promises, when she tries to kill Adora in order to permanently sever her connection with her own life and eliminate a possible rival for advancement (should Adora ever return). She’s told herself that she doesn’t want Adora back, and at least partly means it. Yet we still show her care for Scorpia and Entrapta and even Shadow Weaver in Season 2. It’s when Catra realizes that Shadow Weaver has chosen Adora over her once again that she takes her darkest turn. It’s not just that she destroys reality out of spite, it’s that she rejects her chance for a better and happier life, betrays every friend she has and focuses single-mindedly on hurting Adora (and arguably herself) and then on surviving when her attempt fails. Then Catra spends an entire season both fully inhabiting her role as a villain (and not a sympathetic one - really only our history with her leaves us sympathetic) and being utterly self-destructive and miserable. At the end, as mentioned, she’s a broken, suicidal wreck who has destroyed everything she’s strived for. If this was an HBO drama, we’d roll credits here and she’d go down as another self-destructive antihero. It would perhaps be too much to call her ‘Walter White as a catgirl’, but still. Of course, her story doesn’t end there.

Something that is incredibly dark that is happening in step with this is Catra’s hardening of herself, indeed, her dehumanization of herself. We see her struggle with her natural compassion, her kindness, her need for connection, her desire for happiness, and we see her ignore it all, stamp it down and nearly snuff it out. This is a huge factor in her descent into becoming a real villain (no ‘anti’ qualifiers needed). Every step of her descent is a struggle for Catra - not going with Adora in the second part of ‘The Sword’, trying to kill Adora in ‘Promise’, going back to the Horde, betraying Entrapta, lying about Entrapta, threatening Scorpia, destroying the world - but she always chooses evil. And with every step she becomes more isolated, more callous, and more cruel. Her default reaction becomes not just bravado and mockery and insolence, but threats, bullying and intimidation, until her management style is identical to Hordak’s, and indeed, is quite a bit worse. Catra starts off fighting for Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s approval and struggling to survive, and ends up cackling maniacally at her brutal and murderous conquests. She has very deliberately turned herself into a cruel conqueror, and a tyrant. This self-dehumanization is a huge part of evil in the world, I think, and it’s really powerful to see it so clearly in a kids show.

Meanwhile her insistence on evading all responsibility finally results in a self-serving, self-protective narrative that insulates her from responsibility or self-examination but also cuts her off from reality and other people. It’s always a bit unclear to what extent her various untruths (about Adora leaving her, about Shadow Weaver’s escape and her concealment of it not being her fault, about Entrapta betraying Hordak) are things she believes, lies she is telling to have power over others (mostly Scorpia) or things that she doesn’t quite believe but is trying to convince herself of. It’s probably all of these at various times, and in different degrees for each lie. The end result is that Catra is even more alone, because only she inhabits the safe cocoon of lies she’s built around herself. It also is the key to her and the Horde’s downfall - Catra is so isolated and in such denial that she can’t see how thin her forces are spread, and this crack shows up even in episode 1 of Season 4, with her insistence that the Princess Alliance is in shambles (when, in fact, it’s already rebounding, and proves more resilient than she allows herself to believe, and is led by a woman as ruthless and determined as herself). This part of Catra’s arc brilliantly shows how deception (of yourself and others) can feel protective by keeping shame at bay, but ultimately is destructive and strips someone of so much of the intellectual and moral qualities that we call ‘human.’ It’s also chilling to see since we’ve seen the end game of this mentality play out in US national politics, at the highest level.

I said at the opening that we’ve never seen a sympathetic character like Catra in a kids show. What about Zuko? I would argue that Zuko is never a cruel, or as callous, or as self-destructive as Catra is at her worst. Zuko is motivated by a desire for recognition from his abusive father (much like Catra is initially motivated by desire for recognition from Hordak and Shadow Weaver, and indeed Adora), and perhaps a desire to belong in the Fire Nation. All of this gets wrapped together in his ‘Honor’. He’s a young man with a very weak sense of what he truly believes, instead relying on external guides to what he should do. He’s also incredibly self-involved, and initially indifferent to anyone’s pain but his own and anyone’s needs but his own need to restore his honor. Uncle Iroh is there throughout to push Zuko both to see the needs of others and to become his own person. Zuko’s redemption arc, then, is a twofold quest to recognize other people and to find his own moral center and act from it. This is a pretty powerful coming of age story in that it is about him becoming his own person and throwing off the shackles of his upbringing. Politically, it’s a powerful story of a young man taking responsibility for his own actions in an authoritarian regime and refusing to participate in its imperialism any more and to embrace a new way forward both for himself and his nation. At the same time, in some ways it is easy to sympathize with Zuko because his greatest crimes are those of weakness - he’s not strong enough to stand up to his nation and his family until midway through the last season. Catra though...Catra does what she does, eventually, because she wants to hurt people. She’s cruel, and spiteful, and destructive in ways that are truly scary and which prevent any excuse or mitigation.

Which brings up the other comparison - Azula. But while Azula is (somewhat inconsistently) shown either as a monstrous child sociopath or a traumatized and broken child who can’t help it (and thus, perversely, as not a moral agent but something like a monster), Catra is consistently shown as a moral agent. Catra chooses her own path, every step of the way. She has so many chances to do something else - Adora’s offers to leave together in the two-part series opener, Promises, Scorpia’s suggestion that they dessert the Horde and become desert gang leaders, etc - and until season 5, she turns them all down. While Azula seems destined for evil and madness, with Catra we see a young woman very deliberately walk down the path into unmitigated evil with both eyes open. And then we see it destroy her.

And after she is basically destroyed, we see her build herself back. This process actually starts in Season 4 with the creeping realization that even when she is winning she is miserable and alone. She doesn’t even notice Scorpia is gone for several episodes, then she completely loses it. She spends the entire time when she is at her most triumphant isolated and raging and borderline incoherent, as ineffectual as she accuses Hordak of being. She’s won, and she’s alone, and she’s the most unhappy she has ever been, and I think for the first time she realizes that. And that’s the worst blow to her, even before all the external things come crashing down. She’s already miserable before Double Trouble and Glimmer deal her a triple coup de grace of destroying all her armies*, turning her and Hordak against each other and then Double Trouble’s epic evisceration. By the time Glimmer shows up, Catra is, as mentioned, literally suicidal. But she’s also already begun the process of changing in that she knows that she has a problem (her, and her self/other-destructive tendencies). Moreover, she knows, at some level, that what she really wants isn’t conquest, or to prove herself as the baddest leader of the Horde, but love - and she’s seen how she’s squandered that at every opportunity.

Let’s just pause for a moment to observe how much better Glimmer is at villainous machinations than Catra. In a couple episodes she makes a faustian bargain for unlimited power, kills all her enemies armies, sets her two chief foes at each other’s throats and literally cripples one while rendering the other helpless. And given her ironic non-answer about hurting Catra (‘we’re the good guys, remember?’ and the fact that she’d tried to kill Catra twice before**, she walked into Hordak’s sanctum fully intending to end Catra’s life, one way or another. She does all this through ruthlessness, recklessness and treachery, and she could give like, a TED talk on villainy. Of course it also blows up in her face and is actually way worse than the portal did in Catra’s, endangering the whole universe (I always assumed that the portal only threatened Despondos), dooming Etheria to invasion and all that. Of course, Catra pulled that switch and then fought Adora knowing that the world was ending, while Glimmer was just ignoring warnings from...just about everyone, including Shadow Weaver. So yeah, Glimmer, best kids show antihero since Princess Bubblegum***(unless we’re counting Catra as an antihero, which works for the first half of season 5).

Anyway, at the beginning of Season 5 Catra is adrift. Though some interpretations, like TV tropes, see her as immediately falling back into old habits and casting her lot in with Prime, I see her actions from the end of Season 4 onwards as more ambivalent. She seems to be kind of...going through the motions. She doesn’t have any of the drive or passion in her plotting that she once did, she seems to be maneuvering into Prime’s good graces out of habit. At best she’s back in the survival mode of early season 1, but without the ambition and desire to prove herself that motivated her. Some interpretations put a lot of stock in Prime being someone that can’t be bargained with or appeased, but...I don’t buy it. I take him, to an extent, at his word when he says that he was ‘exalt’ Catra (I am sure it is something awful). Catra actually gets what she wants halfway through “Corridors.” Only it’s not what she wants. She’s done jockeying for advantage, especially in a world where she truly would be alone because all she has is this psychopathic narcissist and his clones for company. She wants connection. She wants to do what is right. She’s suppressed all her humanity (felinitity? Anyway) for years and it’s made her miserable, and now she’s ready to embrace it. At the same time she confronts her own culpability, seeing just how much harm she’s done and admitting it for the first time. Her first lifeline is Glimmer, the only person she can actually talk to, the only other Etherian, the woman whose mother she doomed and who has nearly killed her three times. But Glimmer is also going through her own dark night of the soul - Glimmer and Catra’s character arcs were converging at the same time that Catra’s and Adoras and Glimmer’s and Adora’s were diverging. And they come together on either side of that forcefield, just talking and being people in an environment that is designed to be as dehumanizing as possible. Even this barest lifeline is enough for Catra to hold on to for dear life, and enough to inspire her to not just feel bad about the bad things she’s done, but do something good.

But the first way she does this is a cop out. Her plan, like Shadow Weaver’s in the finale, is to sacrifice/kill herself doing ‘one good thing.’ That way she doesn’t have to figure out how to live with the consequences of her actions, face the possible rejection of the people she loves whom she’s wronged, and do the hard work of building herself back up as a better person. She gets to die a hero rather than live as a villain. That said, unlike Shadow Weaver she does at least get off one apology, and it makes all the difference.

Then Adora fucks Catra’s sacrifice up, in glorious, space operatic, gay AF pulp fiction fashion, by saving the cat. Catra is mind controlled or unconscious for most of this episode, but what she does do is so crucial. When Adora comes for her, she reaches out to her, as soon as she is able. She doesn’t push her away, she takes Adora’s help, and her love, and Adora does the rest in badass fashion. The next few episodes plus the so perfect its canon Don’t Go are my favorite part of Catra’s entire arc.

She nearly falls back into her old habits, at least partly. Now that she has to live with what she’s done rather than just dying for it she just wants to run away again. But when she has to choose between losing Adora all over again and confronting herself and her past, she chooses Adora, and asks her to stay.

Catra then spends the rest of Season 5 slowly easing herself into the very human world of the Princess Alliance - the comaradery, the dedication to others and a cause, the goofiness. I’m going to talk a lot more about her relationship with Adora in my Catradora post, but I do want to highlight three moments.

The first is Catra running away again. This is actually a big change from what she’s done before - she’s not leaving because she’s angry, or bitter, or spiteful, she’s leaving because she doesn’t want to see the woman she loves sacrifice herself yet again (maybe this time for good) after being manipulated by the woman who had abused them both. But then she comes back. And then she confronts her abuser in a way that she has never done before - for the first time in the series, she not only calls Shadow Weaver out but calls her to do the right thing, and doesn’t give up until she does (this is after Adora also calls SW out and cuts her off forever, meaning that her two charges have finally called her on her bullshit and chosen each other over her, more in my Shadow Weaver Rant...and I guess my Catradora rant).

Then, at the end, Catra both stays with Adora through her potentially fatal harnessing of the Heart of Etheria and then her comes in and rescues her by challenging her to do something for Catra and for herself. Not to be with Catra, or to kiss her, or love her, but just stay for her. Needless to say, Adora responds far more enthusiastically than Catra had dared hope. (more on this in my Catradora rant).

Catra starts the show convinced she doesn’t need anyone except Adora, and she’s willing to even push Adora away if she can’t have Adora on her own terms. She goes down that path - ambition, manipulation, treachery, cruelty and isolation - until she has nothing left. She then slowly, painfully, turns around and reaches out and begins to heal the pain in Etheria and the universe rather than causing more. This is a psychological journey in many ways, but even more than that it is a profoundly moral one. It is a story of her accepting responsibility for her actions, facing reality, reaching out to others and making amends. It is in every sense a redemption. And while it works perfectly with Adora’s own development into her own, fuller, happier, healthier person, it works not because of Adora or the power of love, but because of Catra herself. Adora’s companionship, Adora’s rescuing of her and holding her to account, all of these are necessary for Catra to change for the better. But in the end it is Catra herself who chooses the right path, maybe for the first time in her life. And that’s what makes the romance work in turn - Catra is motivated to change not simply by a desire to impress her girlfriend or by Adora’s shining goodness (to the contrary, Adora’s a healthier and less self-sacrificing person at least in the finale...she comes around later than Catra) but by her desire to be true to herself and seek out what she really needs and wants - which is love, and connection, and to do good rather than evil. It’s a gorgeous story that takes an antihero all the way down to hell and then back again, and this makes it a truly unique redemption arc in all of kids TV - not just because of how far Catra falls, but how far she travels overall.

*(I know a lot of fanficcers talk about there being a lot of Horde Soldiers left but like...in the show...they’re nearly all dead, guys. Glimmer and company...okay mostly Mermista... just about killed them all in an afternoon. The cadet Triad survives because they deserted and weren’t there to get drowned/frozen/suffocated by plants when the grand invasion of Brightmoon went sideways)

**Okay, once she was only an accessory to Shadow Weaver’s attempted murder of Catra, the other time she leaves Catra for dead in ‘Pulse’

***I stan PB so hard guys. So hard. Machiavellian genius, mad scientist, god figure, possible Nietzschean Ubermensch? She’s so great. So great.

#she ra #she ra adora #she ra catra #spop catra #redemption arcs

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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So, I get the distaste for Rebels and The Bad Batch (definitely that last one), and I can certainly suggest @agoddamn's series of watching Clone Wars (because wow, I'd forgotten how poor that series could be), but with The Mandalorian, the most I can understand of your dislike of it is how it handles previous characters. Which, yeah, Filoni and his Precious OCs, but other than that, what about it? I mean, the plot/theme seemed simple to me: focusing on the relationship between Din and Grogu.

Ack, I didn't realize that out of context of my past ten years of fannishness and fannish engagement the takeaway from recent critical posts would be "Bedlam hates Star Wars," let alone "Bedlam hates Rebels"!

Look, I love Star Wars -- I genuinely do love Rebels and TCW, I'm very fond of Resistance and most of the films, and there are other parts of the ancillaries (books, comics, games) that I love, like, and/or enjoy. There are other parts of the saga that I dislike, a lot of it that I'm pretty neutral on because I just don't care; there's very little that I outright hate. (There are things that I avoid because I know I would hate them; I won't read Dark Disciple because the old EU Republic/Clone Wars comics from Dark Horse were formative for me and I'm not really over how Quinlan Vos's story line got retconned for TCW and thus the novel, so I don't feel the need to rub my face in it.)

I think, especially with Star Wars, there's a tendency to think that people only complain because they dislike or hate whatever it is they're complaining about it. I don't talk about the parts of Star Wars I actually hate because I frankly don't see the point in talking about the stuff I have no emotional investment in, or where my emotional investment only is distaste -- that's why I'll almost never talk about the ST. (And why I've only talked about the back half of Rebels S4, which I do genuinely hate, a handful of times over the years: I don't want to think about the thing I actually hate.) I talk about Rebels and TCW because those are the parts of Star Wars that I love and because I occasionally want to dig into why there are parts of them that just don't work for me. (And I do realize that if anyone pays attention to what I reblog and don't it may come off as me not liking them particularly; 99% of the time I only reblog TCW or Rebels gifsets immediately after I've rewatched episodes, and I haven't been doing rewatches lately for various reasons.) Critique doesn't mean "I hate it," it means "I want to think about this more on a critical level." It means "I love the puzzle pieces, why does the way they were put together not work for me? How could they have been done differently so that it would have worked for me?" Like I said a few weeks ago, while I don't want to actively add negativity to the fandom, I also don't really want to sit down and shut up if something isn't doing it for me if otherwise I love the thing; I want to figure out why it doesn't work. This is the flip side of "if you can't say anything positive, don't say anything at all" -- I'm not talking to Dave Filoni or the other showrunners (and I would never say any of this to the face of anyone at Lucasfilm), I'm sitting here talking to myself and to my friends about why the puzzle pieces don't quite come together for me. (And the bonus of me putting it on Tumblr is that I can actually find it again, because sometimes I do want to go back and see what I said about XYZ.)

If I'm not actively talking about all the things I love about Rebels or TCW it's because I don't particularly feel the need to justify why Thing works for me, because I already know it works for me. Or because I spent the first two years or so of Rebels and big chunks of TCW doing episode liveblogs, which are on the back end of my "Bedlam watches Rebels" and "Bedlam watches TCW" tags, and I don't feel the need to come back and say "I love the way XYZ happened" six or seven times. Or because I think it would be obvious because I've written something around a million words of fanfic about the two of them. Or because I have three Rebels tattoos and am a Rebels cosplayer, which obviously I don't really talk about on Tumblr but is something that I personally know. I mostly have not talked about The Bad Batch publicly (and only a little privately) because mostly it's not doing much that triggers strong feelings in me one way or another, though I do have the whole "why are these puzzle pieces not working for me, how would I have put them together differently" feel about parts of it.

As for Mando specifically -- look, Mando's fine. I understand why it appeals to a lot of people, even if I am not one of those people. I don't particularly find Grogu appealing either on a character or an aesthetic level. I find that for me personally the show varies wildly in quality from episode to episode; I find it to be a little too clever about itself in how it deals with both the world, its plot, its place in the saga, and its characters in a way drives me up the wall. It hits a couple of really specific things that are huge do not wants for me and some of that is on a shallow note of "I don't like how they do their Twi'lek prosthetics" and some of it is "I don't particularly like the aesthetics" and some of it is a weightier "I'm confused about what the thematic points of the show are because they're all over the map" and yes, some of it is, "I don't like how Mando intersects or does not intersect with other parts of the saga." Or the way that it gets valorized for being live action rather than animated by a lot of the fandom and then gets elevated over the other parts of the saga that I care about the most (TCW and Rebels). I've talked in the past about how Mando genuinely made me feel gaslit, even if that was no one's intention and thus was not actually gaslighting; it just managed to hit on my specific issues. I don't talk about Mando that much because mostly I just don't care and when I do talk about it it's because it managed to trip into something I do care about.

And if I sound particularly cranky right now, it's because every time I say something critical and it starts making tracks out of my usual circles, someone comes in to go "wow! you must hate Star Wars!" or "wow! you care a lot about [aesthetic choice]! why would you care about that!" or "wow! you're an idiot for thinking XYZ would happen/not happen!" or variations thereof. I've been in fandom for twenty years. I've been in this fandom since George W. Bush was president. I know how it goes. I'm going to reiterate the post I made after the Mando finale:

in any expanded canon, people are going to have different deal-breakers on where they can suspend their disbelief and it’s not a judgment on you and yours if theirs is different than yours. nor does it automatically say something bad about them! it just means y’all have different priorities and that’s fine! neither one of you should be jumping down each other’s throat because their line in the sand is “this contradicts something in previous canon” and yours is “the CGI is unconvincing.”

I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of condescension (rather than hostility, which tbh is par for the course in SW so I just tune it out) recently and like…people can have different priorities. it’s fine. they’re not stupid for having their priority be “I don’t like the prosthetics” when your priority is “character A was mean to character B.” don’t worry, Lucasfilm isn’t listening to any of us.

#this was the first thing I saw when I turned my computer on for Sunday zoom #so I am perhaps a LITTLE crankier than I would have been otherwise #sorry about that #bedlam replies

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iwanttobeyourwonderwoman · 3 years

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I can barely breathe when you are near.

I’m just gonna say I totally loved the show. Mad love.

And in case you haven’t figure it out yet, or watched the show to get it, I’m talking about Ginny and Georgia.

So many important topics touched on so many feelings and oh so many love triangles.

So join me as i dissect the whole show hehe .

Alright basic plot-

Young single mom Georgia and her teenage daughter Ginny, and younger son Austin, are always on the road and have now moved across the country to the small town of Wellsbury, Massachusetts from Texas, where they encounter a whole load of quirky characters. Ginny, who never had friends, slowly starts fitting in with the popular sophomores, mainly her neighbour Maxine, who also has a twin brother Marcus while Georgia befriends their mother Ellen. The series follows their attempts and struggles of fitting in with the town, all while developing their own love triangles (square in Georgia’s case). And the best part is, the unfolding of Georgia’s dark past filled with teen mom struggles and a little bit of murder mystery as to how she has gotten to where she is now.

Teen mom and daughter combo again? Been there done that!

Well yes, as everyone compares it to Gilmore Girls (my personal favourite show ever) here are some similarities and differences as well as other show references.

*SPOILERS!!

It does explore that close relationship that Ginny and Georgia have, but obviously the kind of bond that Rory and Lorelai had were a lot stronger and had their own personal quirks and wit. There were often rifts in G&G’s relationship caused by the secrets of Georgia’s past as well as Ginny feeling inferior to her own mother in terms of looks and her ability to be a chameleon to fit in anywhere. Rory was more focused on her grades and was comfortable just having her few friends. Ginny on the other hand wanted to be liked and wanted to fit in with her school friends and eventually becomes part of MANG and the boys. And in the case of the mothers, Lorelai focused on raising Rory and worked her way up to eventually owning her own Inn while Georgia snuck and tiptoed her way around swindling money wherever she could but all in the best intentions of her kids more than herself, desperate to give her kids the life she never had.

Also in a way I feel like this is also similar to Jane the Virgin except of course Jane’s character is older, but if you take the standpoint of the mother-daughter relationship and love triangle(Jane/Rafael/Michael) as well as a little psychotic Murder mystery Petra vibes.

, I feel like G&G is a good mix of Gilmore and JTV.

When it comes to love interests, Ginny was stuck between boyfriend Hunter and neighbour Marcus. Sweet, innocent Hunter (my favourite character in the whole series because if you know me you’d know I’m a hopeless romantic) was pretty much Dean to Rory, while cool skater and stoner guy Marcus was Jess. And honestly I see a similar trend here where most people are Team Jess/Marcus whereas I’m team Dean/Hunter for the main fact that Dean and Hunter both treated the girls really good and I like that.

Georgia, as I mentioned was more of in a love square than a triangle, because why the hell not right? There’s Joe, the owner of the cafe where everyone spends most of their time, then there’s Mayor Paul, who Georgia pushes her way to work for to get on his good side. And then of course, Zion, Ginny’s father. Sounds a lot like Luke, Jason and Christopher doesn’t it. I love that Joe had a more interesting and different story, where it was depicted in the flashback scene where homeless young Georgia, just found out she was pregnant at a gas station and comes out to a crowd of high schoolers, which is when she meets Joe. She says to him “I’ll look you up if I’m ever in Wellsbury” Joe was already attracted to her as a teenager and doesn’t realise it’s the same Georgia he met years ago till the last episode whereas Georgia has known all this while. I don’t know about you but I feel like now Georgia has the funds to move to somewhere she aspired to be, where she knows her kids will get the best and where she received “a sandwich and a pair of raybans that changed my life” Also let me just add that Raymond Ablack (Joe) is INCREDIBLY HOT.

Moving on to Paul, Georgia is attracted to him but there is that underlying greed because Paul can provide her stability and security and power. And that is when she will finally feel like she has achieved wheat she needs to. Towards the end, she almost chooses Zion because of her deep affection for him as ‘her penguin’ as she refers to him as. Being with Zion also means she can let her guard down and relax a little, and obviously is a great father to Ginny and even Austin who isn’t even his biologically. Which also makes both guys equally good contenders for Georgia.

Another thing I love about the show is MANG. Their friendship is real, it’s not just Abby and Norah accepting Ginny because of Max. Yes Abby did throw her under the bus in the beginning but they soon became really close and never singled her out after the shoplifting incident. It wasn’t a whole case of Regina George and the plastics all over again. They didn’t care that she was different.

So I feel like Abby is a very interesting character also. I read that her character was created based on a friend of the writer. So abby puts up a very strong front when actually she is feeling quite distraught from her parents ongoing divorce as well as her own issues with body image. Abby is very petite but still is not satisfied with her body so she tapes her thighs to make them look smaller and wear tight jeans so that she can look slimmer. I the Halloween episode, Press even calls her “whale legs” and she obviously gets upset and you can see it affects her because she’s striving for such a perfect image all the time but also I feel like she has a thing for Press so that really messes her up. You can also see she does get a little jealous of Ginny and Max’s friendship but that’s mainly because she feels lonely and unheard and she ends off being estranged from Norah and Max feeling like her whole world crumbled. I really hope MANG gets to patch up. They were the ideal friend group along with the guys.

“Oppression Olympics, let’s go.”

I don’t know guys, this line really stood out to me.

Basically this is the scene in episode 8 where Ginny and Hunter argue about racism and why Ginny deserved to win that writing contest with her unique style (girl used slam poetry for goodness sake that essay was amazing!!??) But Hunter won and he is clearly the favourite of their teacher. He talks about how he is half Taiwanese and the Asian stereotypes he faces here as well as the White remarks he gets from the Asian side of his family. Ginny too says she can’t fit in because she is half Black and how this town had a very small black population and people are not sure how to look at her. I feel like touching on these topics of race was really vital to not only the show but to the actors as well. From the bts, I read that Antonia (Ginny) and Mason (Hunter) were in a room with the writer and jus spoke about the kind of remarks they have personally faced which helped develop the argument scene because it was so real and raw and quite upsetting to watch. It’s something very relatable to the audience which also just amplified that whole episode overall.

I mentioned earlier my favourite character is Hunter. I admit I have a major crush on both the actor and the fictional character. Ok so I think Hunter was a great character, a very good boyfriend too, I mean look at the way he cared for Ginny, supported her, just that unfortunately she was more attracted to Marcus in the end but also that ugly oppression olympics fight just gave his character more depth to show that Hunter wasn’t as perfect as he seemed. I think girls watching the show deserved to see what a good guy looked like. He was smart, in a band, a very caring boyfriend, popular but not cocky. If you compare to let’s say the character if Peter Kavinsky, I think Hunter made a better boyfriend. DO i also think Kavinsky is a damn dream boat? Of course I do. but then again, I thought John Ambrose was a much better guy in the TATB series. Kavinsky was originally dating another girl before the whole fake couple thing started. Whereas going back to Hunter, he already admired Ginny from the first episode and stayed truly respectful until the end of the show. And that’s something girls should see and aspire to have.

Yes I loved the song I loved the fact that he sang it for her, I am such a hopeless romantic and I absolutely hate that poor Hunter/Mason has been getting a lot of backlash for the song/character. I’ve rewatched a lot of the Hunter/Ginny scenes multiple times just because. Hunter was a good guy. Period.

So looking forward, I think a lot of important topics were touched in this show, slightly different from let’s say 13 Reasons Why, and I hope that they can continue to delve into those stories such as racism,self harm, body image and so on which really hit home for me. Important discussion topics, important for kids to see like oh hey this character is kinda like me, and if they are facing these issues, how can they get through it?

Also I need answers to all my questions - Where did Ginny go? How does Georgia get away with everything? Will MANG get back together? Does Abby have a deeper story to tell? Do Marcus and Ginny end up together? AND WHAT ABOUT MY POOR BBY HUNTER??? Lots of unanswered questions, lots of stories to dig deeper into, and so many secrets. I loved the mother l-daughter relationship, the same way I loved Lorelai and Rory’s relationship too.

I obviously totally enjoyed the show, I’ve recommended it to many friends and I hope they enjoy it as much as I do, and get more people on my Hunter Chen bandwagon hahahaha! Let’s hope for a season 2!!

Another super long post, finally done. I can move on to watching other shows now (and still constantly wish I too had cool stuff like Sophomore sleepover)

Hate you, kidding! Love you, mean it!

(just gonna leave these here because why not????)

#gituuuu #ginnyandgeorgia

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miraculouscontent · 4 years

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I think the worst part of Miracle Queen was Bearded Idiot--I mean Thomas Astruc's immature response to fans who were hoping for a good redemption arc. "I don't know why you idiots are so upset. Can't you see we meant for Chloe to be irredeemable from the start? It wasn't a last-minute change/middle finger to the audience at all! You just don't understand what Chloe represents." (That last line was an actual tweet from Astruc responding to criticism of the finale)

I think the problem - and I’ve talked about this before with friends - is that Astruc seems to do this thing where he cares more about the “twist” than how actually good the “twist” is. He doesn’t put priority in build-up because the idea is to constantly keep the audience on the edge of their seat even if it’s from a deceptive standpoint.

And I don’t understand his logic at all. If we were “supposed” to always know, then why bother having this moment that’s framed in such a way that part of the fandom is blaming Ladybug for Chloe turning to the dark side (after, you know, Ladybug LITERALLY told Chloe that she couldn’t be Queen Bee anymore)? If she’s “irredeemable" and we were supposed to know that, then why have scenes constantly cut back to Chloe and how frustrated she is that she’s not getting her way? It’s just showing us things that we’re already supposed to know.

And most importantly, why waste our time showing us glimpses of Chloe being nice to people even if it’s, at its roots, fraudulent?

Because that’s all this is: a waste of time, and a confused waste of time at that. Characters go back and forth on stuff and it’s cheap because Astruc can just brush it off as us not understanding his “vision.”

Even if the idea was to go for “a character who is sad but still not redeemable,” two things:

1 - Isn’t that what Gabriel already is?

2 - We didn’t need anything past “Queen Wasp” to get that point across. Could just be left as “Chloe was sad, but that doesn’t change the fact that she nearly killed people, let’s move on.”

And it’s a mess because the show seems to go back and forth on this. On one hand, Chloe kept having the “I’m sorry”/”I feel sad” moments that are supposed to elicit a reaction from the audience, but on the other, there’s literally every other thing Chloe has ever done.

It’s a massive insult to characters like Nino (who desperately needs screentime) that the character who’s supposed to be “irredeemable” gets so much focus and so many episodes dedicated to her prancing around, treating everyone like garbage, and being a terrible teammate, yet also getting metaphorical head pats because she made puppy dog eyes at the camera once.

And it’s like... for me personally, yeah, I didn’t see it as any surprise at all that she turned to Hawk Moth’s side. She was never given consequences for her actions, so it’s not some sort of twist that she hasn’t learned anything.

I don’t blame Ladybug - it’s not her job to babysit - but I blame the writing staff for wasting everyone’s time with episodes like “Miraculer” that show Chloe warding off an akuma just to say however-many-episodes-later that she’s irredeemable. I also blame people like Miss Bustier and Adrien for teaching Marinette stuff that ultimately amounted to her making a “mistake” by picking Chloe for the bee and then deciding that it wasn’t a good idea (give me a break, seriously).

Though, of course, Astruc’s word doesn’t really mean anything. He’s openly admitted to lying, so everything he says should be taken with copious amounts of inevitable salt for whenever it turns out that he didn’t actually mean it.

The problem here is that the message they’re trying to give the audience is extremely muddy. They have their bootleg sunshine child talk to Marinette about how Chloe’s not useless to make Marinette feel bad, then pretend as if that was Chloe’s problem when - even before that episode - Chloe has been helpful (”Despair Bear”). They have Miss Bustier talk about spreading love over hate or whatever (which seems to carry into “Malediktator” with Marinette believing that the bee will make Chloe a better person), but then we have “Miracle Queen” which is just ten layers of confusing; is the show trying to tell me that it was a mistake to pick Chloe in the first place, or that it was Ladybug’s fault (ugh) for not continuously giving Chloe the bee, which would have supposedly prevented Chloe from switching sides?

But--if Chloe is “irredeemable”--then why would the right choice be to continuously give her what she wants? How is it a good lesson to give a tantrum-throwing child whatever they want just so they’ll be quiet?

This is the issue with the show: it teaches Marinette bad lessons or lessons that she doesn’t need, and then when she actually puts them into practice, it becomes her fault. Episodes aren’t contained in a vacuum and it just makes rewatches all the more confusing.

And no matter where Chloe ends up by the end of the series, no one will be in agreement on it. If she’s redeemed, some people will think that she was too unlikable so they won’t care, but if she’s not redeemed, others will feel that their time was wasted or that they felt like she had a chance from all the emotional manipulation sad scenes that made them feel bad for her.

I’m not against the idea of showing that it’s good to know when someone is unable to be helped versus someone who just needs a hand extended to them, but that cannot be something done over so many episodes unless they’re going to touch on the details that they never talk about.

“Miraculer” explicitly avoids talking about Chloe no longer getting the bee because she’s a terrible person and instead focuses on matters of identity. If she was “so obviously irredeemable,” then why wasn’t that brought up? Why was it not addressed where exactly things went wrong in “Miracle Queen” for Chloe to behave like this (and I don’t mean specifically her siding with Hawk Moth; I mean what should’ve been done to change this outcome pre-”Miracle Queen”)? Why does it have to be left to the audience (i.e: the target demographic, children) to figure out what everything meant?

Again, it all comes back to keeping the audience confused guessing. Flip-flopping and keeping things vague is the easiest and laziest way to do so.

#category: long post #category: salt #category: staff #word count: over 1000 #other: ask and answer

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bre95611 · 4 years

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HI! I’m finally rewatching 15x17 so I’m doing an in-depth(ish?) super stoned commentary! Hooray!

Before I get into it, I just really have to say, god I love this season so so so much. The writing has just been beautiful, and it has me EMOTIONAL af. Anyway. Here we go!

I always like looking at the Then/Now scenes. I feel they can ring some really important storywide context to the show. A great example of this is the Pizza Man montage. This episode it starts with the conversation from a few episodes back with Dean and Sam discussing Jack killing God.

I’ve found the Dean/Amara relationship very interesting. After how it was played up in the 15x15 Gimme Shelter, always from Dean’s perspective in a joking manner. I believe it was @verobatto-angelxhunter that discussed the Big Married Energy it gave off, Dean teasing Castiel about a woman from his past. Season 11, as the beginning of the Dabb era, has been calling my name for a rewatch lately, especially with Amara being brought back. Its always been established that the connection Dean and Amara have was not something Dean liked. It wasn’t actual attraction. I’ll talk more about this later.

I have made some random posts here and there talking about the symmetry in endings between Season 11 and Season 15, I will also dig into this more later.

Saw a post about the amount of times “world” is said, want to keep track of that. I know there is a heavy Destiel attachment, and the second time it is said is during the Then sequence, Chuck’s dialogue from the episode with the tvs, talking about how its time to clear the board. (Want to look into Chess mentions this season, maybe even Dabb era as a whole? Because obviously there’s been a game going on at the cosmic level for quite some time). It doesn’t show the scene where Dean and Cas in the kitchen comes up on the tv where Chuck calls them “the world”. but it does have that section of dialogue as t screens are being shown, bringing that to mind.

Then we have Meg 2.0 as The Shadow, Cas is confused why he is being harmed since they’re on the same side. The Shadow makes their loyalty known. Keep this in mind. Will touch on this later as well.

Shit this is a lot for the episode not even starting yet. Below the cut for more!

God Amara is a QUEEN and I love her SO MUCH.

Sam tells Cas to “just get home” cause the Bunker is his FUCKING HOME

One thing I’ve seen brought up a lot is how Dean is always very action focused. Solve the problem at hand, “cross that bridge when we get to it” type of mentality. His plans always revolve around that. Cas and Sam are always very focused on there being another way, how there is always another way, especially when one oftheir lives are at stake. Sam calls him out. Sam wouldn’t care if Dean was saying that all the time if it were actually true, wouldn’t wonder if he ever got tired of saying it if they did only ever have one choice. TFW always subverts the problem at hand. Last season, their only shot of beating Michael was the Malak Box. Season 11 was soul bomb Dean, 13 was Dean saying yes to Michael. Ya’ll see a theme yet? Dean loves to sacrifice himself. Sam’s done the same exact thing, closing the Hell gates, letting out Lucifer. Cas’s whole thing in Season 6? They’ve all done the same things. over and over. Hamster wheel. Think of what made all those endings obsolete? What made them find another way, huh?

Fuck that paragraph went somewhere I wasn’t originally taking it, but still a good take IMHO.

I’m loving the SUITS!

I really hope that Amara is not gone. I know I’ve seen some stuff that talks about why that has to have been her last episode, but whatever. Imma still dream. And I really might have to just write a fix-it fic after the finale about Aunt Amara and Jack hanging out.

I just noticed world again (Dean to Amara: saving the whole world’s ass)

“You and I will always help each other.” That look on Dean’s face when she said that. Not the face of someone enjoying being flirted with by and “ex-flame” or whatever the hell

Saw a post about the generational family story that was being told (I believe it was @occamshipper) that basically has Sam is to Jack as Dean was to Sam growing up (Dean is John and Cas is Mary, super awesome read, will try to find and link in a bit). This whole family arc is about breaking the toxic circle, being a better parent than your parents, found family kinda things. So how has Dean reacted to Sam in these situations? Most recently, I think, is season 8, with the Trials. Sam was sacrificing himself, he knew that, he was okay with it. Sam was suicidal by the end of it, and Dean does what he normally does with Sam and keeps him from finishing the trials, and season 9 starts with Dean completely taking away his autonomy again, allowing Gadreel to possess him. Dean was angry, he was disappointed, he acted like Dean, and that is the kind of treatment he gets from his “big brother” father figure. But Sam breaks through his treatment, tells Jack he is brave and validates him, and doesn’t try and take away his FREE WILL.

Sam continues the path he started on when he told Dean to stop as he continuously made excuses/explained why he had kept things from Sam about Jack. He grows!! I love to see it!! He does NOT give up his FREE WILL. Guys I’m loving it. These boys are actively making HARD decisions and we are seeing growth in real time. TFW in every form has...not really lived up to its name? Sure, the world gets free will, but the boys never do. And not just in situations like they’re told they can’t do something. I’m talking constant violations of each other’s bodily autonomy. Dean all the time with Sam, Cas when he takes down the Hell wall from Sam’s mind, honestly....mostly its Sam having it violated. But the other guys have to stop fucking with it. They all need a variation. Dean needs the Free Will to stop being his father’s soldier, to live his true non performative life. Cas needs to be free of his self doubt. Permission to be happy, not happy in and of itself. Jack needs Free Will to be a fucking toddler.....

Sam SEES it dude, he knows something isn’t right, and he’s the one that figured it out like, every other time this season, too. Jesus. Dean is so desparately caught up in wanting to get the hell OUT of the hamster wheel, he’s too blind to see how deep into it he is. The first plan ANYONE gives him, he goes with it. He’s literally followed Billie’s plan because of one of her books before, and what happened? Cas and Sam brought him back from sacrificing himself.

I’ve really enjoyed how much Sam and Dean are fighting, honestly. Like, my spec for a while now has been that the brothers are going their seperate ways at the end of all this, the only way to satisfyingly bring an impactful end to their toxic codependency that they’ve been chipping away at for the last few seasons.

Guys I’m suuuuuuuper baked,

Dean says “Someone’s gotta be the grownup here” talking to Sam about taking Jack to do the final ritual. Dean is fully his father, talking to the “older brother” Sam protecting the “special child” Jack. Dean is not breaking the cycle established by his father, going mad with rage over his circumstances

Jesus Christ the LOOK ON SAM’S FACE when Dean says Jack’s not family. I’m dead. He looks so broken.

That line though is.....hm. All through season 14 and 15, its been established that Jack is family, their kid. When Lily Sunder comes back to help get his soul, Dean makes comments about not making them go through what she did with her daughter, and again to Belphegor in 15 when asked who he was (after a fight between Dean and Cas no less, calls him “our kid”). So this is how far Dean has spiralled? This is how he is choosing to try and deal with knowing Jack will die? Denial of his importance?

“He’s not like you. He’s not like Cas.” Dean feels he holds a different relationship with Cas than he does with Sam. Just...sayin....

Jared’s acting is......truly just phnomenal.

Man, i feel like the music is off? and it makes me think its intentional, cause Becky says something about how there’s no classic rock? So foreshadowing? nah.

This really does feel like....the last real Sam and Cas interaction. It is heart breaking really.

Alright, I’m posting this now......cause I literally just got to the first commercial break.... So

This is pt 1 I guess.

#spn 15x17 spoilers #spn 15 spoilers #spn spec #spn meta #my meta #my spec

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petekaos · 4 years

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What did you think about the last episode!!

hi hi! so uhhh... this is going to get long and i’ve combined like 10 other asks i want to address, so your ask may be answered here! if you want Rahul’s Take On The 2gether Finale, then brace yourself.

...I didn't really like the last episode, I feel like it could've been a lot better/more emotional

I dunno if it's because I didn't like the last 2 episodes but even though the show literally finished I'm not emotional? The last episode I felt actually really happy watching was ep 9 but now I'm just 'ok, that show finished.' I'm sad bc I thought I would have a stronger reaction to the ending and them getting back together but I'm just meh :/

Really don't want to sound like those annoying people but damn really no kiss scene

I liked the ending, it was okay I guess but gmmtv better prepare for a shitstorm bc so many people didn't lololol

Honestly the best and well written episodes were ones where they still weren't a couple, like 8 and 9 were amazing

Although the finale was good, I feel llke in the future when I want to rewatch my favorite moments from this series, I will go for the first 10 or so episodes more often than not. It kinda feels like 2gether peaked around episodes 7-10, which is perfectly fine!! It was all in all a great series that did what it wanted to do and I’ll always cherish it but, I probably won’t rewatch much of the last two episodes

They made pam even worse!! Before she had her talk with tine anyway!!

My thoughts on the finale: could've been a lot better, could've been a lot worse

2Gether really felt like a giant inflatable castle that was carefully blown up for the past 12 weeks only to let it rapidly and poorly deflate in the end

The ending was fine and was expected but for me it's underwhelming in the sense that the past episodes, especially 4, 8 and 9 were really written in comparison so the finale is kinda meh bc I knew there was gonna be a happy ending. But still the YouTube comments and what some people on tumblr are saying is ridiculous, I don't want to even think about Twitter but imo I don't think any of gmmtvs other shows can top dbks ending like that ending was perfect,

i honestly love that 2gether focused so much on the story and the emotion and became so successful without all the usual fan service. i hope the whole industry takes something away from that! but i still felt like the finale was a little emotionally stunted when it came to tine/sarawat. i just wanted a big YES, I CHOOSE YOU moment, and tine's reappearance and the bracelet scene just didn't do it for me. you know what would have, though? a kiss. or a hug, or holding hands, or something sweet

okay, my friends! here is my opinion on the 2gether finale first, and then i’m gonna address what i personally hold of the more negative response the fandom has shown. i generally thought the finale had... a solid ending. i went into it with absolutely no expectations apart from sarawat’s song and a happy ending, because i knew it would be messy and not as good as ep 4 or 9 etc, considering the sheer amount of open storylines that were left to be resolved in one episode. i knew it would polarise the fandom--but i personally thought the ending was fine! a bit cliche, a bit rushed, but it was okay and it was a good enough ending for me to put 2gether behind me, the first season at least. the bracelet scenes and shots were amazing, the song was incredible (although i wish they would have had sarawat sing a bit more), the conversation pam and tine had was solid as well! there were a lot of things i liked about the finale and bright and win killed their solo acting as always. however, there are some things i wanna get into more detail about that i feel could have been done better, not only as a finale but as a show itself.

time allocated for the storylines. or: plotlines in general. this has been my bone to pick ever since episode 10. not gonna lie, this wasn’t good, especially from ep 10 onwards. there were so many storylines and plotlines that were dragged out further than necessary, and so many plotlines that should have started earlier. best example for this is mil and phukong, the mil redemption storyline should have started in ep 10 and should have had him be sincere for once, and the mil/phukong storyline should have actually made sense from the beginning and started in ep 11 at the latest. the mantype storyline should have also started a bit earlier than that and given us an explanation as to why type was crying at the retreat. however, mantype did pull it off!

writing! this ties in with the first point. the writing felt a bit inconsistent in the last two episodes and it’s a pity, really, that this is one of the downfalls :/ all the actors in this series, from the mains (bright, win, mike, toptap, frank, drake) to the side characters (gunsmile, love, gigie, film, etc.) are such good actors and it’s unfortunate that the last three episodes were a bit :// in terms of writing and plotlines. they all did the best they could with what was written and that... yeah.

conflict. this has to do with the first two points. the finale felt rushed. that’s something that i don’t think anyone really can argue? and i expected that, so i wasn’t too disappointed by it or anything. obviously it would have felt rushed considering the fact that they had to wrap up 3 or 4 episodes’ worth of storylines in one episode, which was a blunder on the writers’ part. the conflict fell flat, then. if they had had pam come in earlier and had tine and sarawat spend more time away from each other, we would have gotten an explosive reaction. i really do think that after they got together for real, the writers struggled to find conflict to keep the story going, jumping from tine’s insecurities to mil to pam for no reason whatever. i think it would have been much better done if we had mil as an antagonist wrapped up and on the road to redemption in ep 10 and had pam come in there, with tine’s insecurities as a b plot. i feel that would have been a bit more gripping. but, hey, guess that’s just me!

order of filming. this has to do with people saying that brightwin’s chemistry was off in the finale. i don’t think it was off, per se, but it was definitely lacking when we compare it to their chemistry in ep 4 or 9 or 10, y’know? that’s because i believe the finale was filmed earlier, when bright and win were still getting to know each other and figuring out how well they could improv. and they can improv, from what we’ve seen! so there really is nothing i can say apart from the fact that it’s a bit disappointing that they decided to film such a pivotal scene at the beginning. if it had been filmed in the end, it would have definitely been better!

flashbacks. the finale needed all the time it was gonna get, and i am disappointed by the amount of flashbacks they used, honestly. i would have cut down on the number of sarawatine flashbacks and used them sparingly when they reunited, because that just... makes sense and evokes emotion in the viewer, you know? the only flashbacks that served well were type’s view of everything and phukong and mil, because they were new. it just... felt a bit inauthentic.

pam. or: the girls in general. there is nothing i can do here but SCREAM. pam should have come in way earlier and replaced mil as the centre point of conflict for ep 11 and 12 to have been as good as the rest of the show, or ep 4 and 9 at least. her character fell so flat and the conflict she brought with her fell so flat as well, honestly. the girls should have been done better--more of earn and sarawat! more of pear! they could have tied into the plot effortlessly!

mil and phukong x mil. yeah this is a... whole ass bulletpoint, unfortunately. call me a clown all you want for expecting him to have at least a half assed redemption arc in the finale but goddamn was that... not good. really bitter over the fact phukong was straight up okay with being a “replacement” for tine even though... that doesn’t even make sense. i just... yeah, this wasn’t good. i feel super bad for frank and drake because they deserve a well written show or at the very least a well written storyline for all of their chemistry and work they put in, considering the fact that they are so so young. i could go on about a good mil arc for ages but i just... yeah i’m writing a fic, so y’all will see.

the reunion. this stems from the flat conflict and the rushed-ness of it all, but yeah. it wasn’t particularly hard-hitting, but i still enjoyed it because it’s sarawat and tine. this has to do with when they filmed as well, and just... because the angst didn’t start early enough for it to hit home. and i really do wish we’d had a scene after that with the both of them, alone. a lot of their things happen with a lot of people around them... and nah.

one year later. bro. bro. bro. the music club thing was cute! but i would have just... loved to see them alone, y’know? a scene of them being alone and intimate, just sitting next to each other on the couch or at a football game or sarawat continuing bringing the cheerleaders snacks, even a year later. them going to another concert. anything where they were just... alone. i wanted to see them together! we got that with mantype and we even got that fucking... scene on the roof where mil and phukong were just fuckin around? yeah? i would have loved to see that with sarawat and tine so much. (also btw pretty sure the rooftop scenes with mil and phukong is also where drake and frank took this photo and it made me so happy dhsndh like... the shot where mil took his hand off phukong’s eyes? i called it immediately and my partner was like ???)

intimacy. chemistry. the biggest thing everyone is talking about. now comes the part that y’all all wanted to know if you’ve been reading this far lmfao, my take on the fact that was no kiss in the finale! and my take is... i expected there to be no kiss in the finale somewhere deep within, and honestly i’m fine with not having a kiss. my only problems with all of this are first of all, that we didn’t get a proper kiss in the entire series and had sarawat kissing tine one-sidedly. secondly, i would have loved verbal intimacy as well! an i love you, or y’know, some hand holding, anything! this is also due to the fact that i believe the series was filmed relatively early on. i just wish... again, that they would have been alone one year later and we could have just seen them being domestic, as we have already seen them!

so those are some of my thoughts on the finale. considering the fandom’s response... i can see why people are upset or disappointed but i don’t think it’s, like, that justified to throw the whole show away as well. yeah, the ending wasn’t perfect, but if you’ve enjoyed the show as a whole... maybe it’s okay, y’know? like, personally, i don’t think i’m ever going to rewatch the finale. but i do love the earlier episodes and i am gonna watch them back at some point, probably! it’s all well and good and valid to criticise the lack of intimacy and kissing in the finale i guess, but if you’re a straight girl then maybe... watch your words. 2gether has portrayed a wonderful love story between two men and to see straight people throw it away as “bromance” or say it’s the “straightest bl of all time” or whatever because of the lack of kisses is kind of hurtful. i am completely open to discussing this with lgbt people, mlm specifically, and you can come talk to me about your thoughts if you’re a straight woman as well. all i’m asking for is that you maybe show a little bit of empathy and respect, y’know? i also do think 2gether peaked around episode 9/10 and i’m fine with that! it gave me so much more than characters and relationships--it gave me the fandom and everyone here and words cannot express how grateful i am for all of you. maybe the last few episodes were poorly written and the finale wasn’t everything y’all hoped for... but i did and do love this show. i cannot wait to see where brightwin go next.

#tried to put this under a cut but it gave up on me lmfaooo #also yeah dbk finale was perfect nothing can compare dsmdhs #2gether the series #2gether finale #for my own tagging purposes #ref #rahul answers

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drneilfox · 3 years

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Scarlet's Swords: Music Films Book Blog 10 (July 2021)

A rollercoaster of a month emotionally with ‘the book’. So many moments of insecurity and anxiety washed away by a series of related and tangential moments and experiences. I went on annual leave finally, to await the arrival of our new baby and to spend a few weeks as a family with little to no responsibility or expectation beyond that. It was freeing to put on my out of office at work and simultaneously put a quasi-OOO on the book for the foreseeable. It might have been foolish given how far behind where I wanted to be I am currently, but it was liberating.

It caused me to rethink my approach, or at least know I need to (I haven’t done it yet because I’m stepping back a tad). In the downtime away from writing I have been tinkering and moving forward at a snail’s pace. One thing I did was to map out all the films I still need to see or see again, or at least have told myself I need to see or see again. It’s up near the 300. Obviously I can’t watch that many and write and read and edit and submit my first draft in February 2022. So I stopped worrying that I had to. I have been prioritising viewing and making peace with the fact that I can’t see everything. It’s weird how pervasive that sense is when writing about cinema and how hard it is to escape. The feeling that I am writing about something I love and want to share with people is subsumed beneath the fear of being ‘tested’ on my knowledge and the facts of it all (even though I’m not presenting fact) and what ‘gaps’ might tell people about me. This is sometimes stronger than the feeling that I am just a terrible writer writing a book no one has any interest in ever reading. I wonder if that’s my age, or the social media age, the fact that it’s taken me so long to get to this point or some wretched combination of all three.

The writing of the list certainly helped put the next few months into focus and my sketch of a new plan, once I am back in earnest at the desk, looks ok. I’m excited to work through the final films and get the book into even better shape. Other events in July certainly helped. One was finishing a draft of the fifth chapter on my list, on films about making music. It was a slog time wise, because of so many interruptions, but I got there on the final day of ‘work’ before annual leave. So it felt momentous and a good way to sign off for a bit.

There was also the arrival of some films from the U.S. I took advantage of the Barnes and Noble 50% off Criterion Collection sale and the fact that I have a dear, dear friend in New York (thank you JC!) to post stuff to me that would mean avoiding import tax, to get my hands on some classic films. I mainly wanted them for the extras but also because I love them. I picked up A Hard Day’s Night, Gimme Shelter (a July rewatch), Transes and one I’ve never seen, Murray Lerner’s Festival. I also picked up maybe my favourite ever music doc, Les Blank’s A Poem Is A Naked Person, and a box set of Blank’s work which includes a ton of music, music-centric, or music related works that I can’t wait to get stuck into. Blank is fast becoming one of my favourite filmmakers.

July’s watchlist was heavy hitters galore as I was watching and rewatching for my Milestones chapter so films and filmmakers included The Last Waltz and other Scorsese works (is Rolling Thunder Revue his best music film maybe?), Jonathan Demme, Julien Temple and films about the Beatles, Stones and Bob Dylan. Big. One such film was Demme’s beautiful concert film Heart of Gold, focusing on Neil Young not long after surgery for a brain aneurysm. It’s a warm and soulful film and one I saw on DVD, in New York, on a lazy afternoon before heading home, while staying with my friend John Carlin (the JC who sent posted me some DVDs this month). I was tired, I was all New York-ed out, and John put it on and we loved it. It meant a lot, maybe more, than it would normally had because a couple of years earlier I had written a play called How It Plays Out, that John travelled to Luton to perform in as the lead, and in the play he performed a Neil Young song, Only Love Can Break Your Heart. John Carlin is a brilliant songwriter in his own right. Check out his work here and buy Songs From The Black House, it’s one of the best records ever made, Fact. I love him.

I also read the first book that will feature in my book since I started writing back last year (nearly 12 months ago!), Thomas F. Cohen’s Playing to the Camera: Musicians and Musical Performance in Documentary Cinema. It was invigorating. Not only is it a great book, but it reminded me why I am working on mine. I want to be in dialogue with these other works that exist, reach out to and pull from them and survey the land of ideas that is music documentary and the writing on it. I loved Cohen’s style and confidence too. It gave me strength to be more confident about my own writing. It was also nice to see so much time dedicated to Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America, a truly magnificent doc I loved writing about.

So over the next few months I shall be reading more and more for the book. I am excited. That trip to the BFI library (where I learned of Cohen’s book), really galvanised me, in ways I’m becoming more aware of as I think more and write less.

Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in July:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

Demme knows

“I just wanna play well and share the stage with my friends”

“He had a lot of ukeleles in the trunk”

Imagine booing one of the greatest live shows ever by one of, if not the, greatest rock n roll backing bands of all time.

Joan Baez’s Dylan impression is bang on.

“I don’t even wanna get in tune”

People lying around everywhere.

Need a shower after watching this.

Babies, planes and Nick Cave

Bob Marley tats and flags

Coke in the nose

Clapton - boring

Bob looks amazing!

“you booed!”

Keroauc’s grave

“I don’t want this shit to work. I hate it”

Bawdy

Ludicrous outfit Mick

Chilly at the heliport

#book #music films #music #music documentary #film #movies #cinema #documentary.

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